1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
14 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
16 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
17 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
20 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
21 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
23 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
24 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
25 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
27 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
28 is running in batch mode. For example,
30 (message "%s" (read t))
32 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
35 ** Faces and frame parameters.
37 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
38 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
39 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
40 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
41 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
42 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
43 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
45 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
46 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
47 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
48 `default' face and vice versa.
52 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
53 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
54 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
56 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
58 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
59 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
60 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
61 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
63 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
64 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
65 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
67 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
70 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
72 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
73 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
74 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
75 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
78 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
80 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
81 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
82 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
83 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
86 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
87 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
88 under Lisp changes, below.
90 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
92 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
93 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
96 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
97 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
98 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
99 customizing face `fringe'.
101 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
102 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
106 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
107 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
109 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
111 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
112 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
113 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
114 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
115 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
118 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
119 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
120 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
121 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
122 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
123 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
125 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
126 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
127 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
128 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
129 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
130 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
132 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
133 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
134 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
135 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
136 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
138 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
140 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
141 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
142 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
144 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
146 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
147 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
148 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
149 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
150 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
155 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
156 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
160 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
161 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
162 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
165 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
167 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
168 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
169 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
172 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
173 have to do anything to activate it.
175 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
177 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
178 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
179 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
180 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
182 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
184 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
186 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
188 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
191 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
194 ** Hscrolling in C code.
196 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
200 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
201 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
203 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
205 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
206 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
207 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
208 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
209 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
211 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
213 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
216 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
217 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
219 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
221 - Mouse-1 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
222 toggles the read-only status.
224 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
226 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
228 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
229 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
232 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
234 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
235 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
236 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
237 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
238 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
239 attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
243 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
244 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
245 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
246 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
247 to enable sound support.
249 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
250 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
251 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
252 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
253 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
254 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
256 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
258 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
260 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
261 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
262 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
264 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
265 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
267 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
268 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
269 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
271 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
273 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
274 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
275 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
276 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
278 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
279 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
280 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
281 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
283 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
284 notably at the end of lines.
286 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
287 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
289 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
290 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
291 after each match to get the replacement text.
293 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
295 If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
296 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
297 on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
298 by setting the following variable:
300 - User option: max-mini-window-height
302 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
303 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
304 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
308 ** Comint (subshell) changes
310 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
311 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
313 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
314 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
315 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
317 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
318 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
319 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
321 ** Changes to TeX mode
323 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
326 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
328 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
329 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
330 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
331 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
332 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
333 can be edited from that buffer.
335 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
336 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
337 `A' to use all marked entries).
339 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
340 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
342 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
343 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
344 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
347 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
348 has the following new features:
350 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
351 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
352 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
353 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
355 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
356 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
357 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
358 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
359 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
364 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
365 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
366 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
368 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
369 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
370 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
371 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
375 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
376 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
377 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
379 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
380 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
383 ** New features in evaluation commands
385 The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
386 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
387 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
388 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
389 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
393 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
394 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
395 is, delete only empty directories.
397 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
398 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
399 copy directories recursively.
401 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
402 use the -f option when sending mail.
406 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
407 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
409 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
411 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
412 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
413 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
414 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
415 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
416 `secondary-selection'.
418 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
419 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
420 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
421 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
422 usual snappy response.
424 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
425 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
426 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
427 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
430 ** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
431 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
432 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
434 ** Shell script mode changes.
436 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
437 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
438 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
442 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
444 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
445 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
446 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
447 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
448 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
450 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
451 declarations when given the --declarations option.
453 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
454 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
456 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
459 *** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
461 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
463 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
466 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
467 variables are tagged.
469 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
471 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
474 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
475 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
476 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
478 ** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
479 These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
480 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
481 currently no specific input method support for them.
483 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sqeuence-nos' to
484 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
485 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
487 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
489 ** New modes and packages
491 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
493 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
495 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
497 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
500 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
503 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
505 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
507 *** whitespace.el ???
509 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
510 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
511 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
512 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
513 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
514 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
515 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
517 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
519 Here is an example of columns:
522 dog pineapple car EXTRA
523 porcupine strawberry airplane
525 Doing the following settings:
527 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
528 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
529 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
530 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
533 Selecting the lines above and typing:
535 M-x delimit-columns-region
539 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
540 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
541 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
543 delim-col has the following options:
545 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
548 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
551 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
554 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
557 delim-col has the following commands:
559 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
560 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
562 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
563 were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
564 is displayed in the "Files" menu.
566 The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
568 To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
570 To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
571 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
573 To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
574 M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
576 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
579 ** Withdrawn packages
581 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
582 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
584 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el.
586 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
588 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
589 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
590 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
591 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
593 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
594 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
597 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
599 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
600 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
601 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
604 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
605 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
607 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
608 instead of being optional.
610 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
611 modify read-only text.
613 ** New functions and variables for locales.
615 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
616 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
617 time functions like strftime. The new variables
618 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
619 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
621 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
622 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
623 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
624 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
625 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
626 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
627 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
629 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
630 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
631 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
634 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
635 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
637 ** New function `propertize'
639 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
640 strings with text properties.
642 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
644 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
645 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
646 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
647 specified value of that property. Example:
649 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
652 ** push and pop macros.
654 A simple version of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
655 is now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
656 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
658 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
659 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
660 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
663 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
664 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
666 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
667 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
668 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
669 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
670 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
672 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
674 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
675 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
676 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
677 [:alpha:] matches letters.
678 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
679 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
680 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
681 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
682 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
683 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
684 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
685 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
686 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
687 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
688 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
691 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
693 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
695 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
697 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
698 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
702 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
703 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
704 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
708 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
709 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
711 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
713 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
714 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
715 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
716 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
717 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
719 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
721 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
722 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
723 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
727 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
728 Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
729 their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
730 hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
732 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
734 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
736 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
738 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
740 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
742 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
745 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
747 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
749 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
751 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
753 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
755 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
757 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
759 Returns the size of TABLE.
761 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
763 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
765 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
767 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
769 - Function: clrhash TABLE
773 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
775 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
778 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
780 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
781 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
783 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
785 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
787 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
789 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
790 arguments KEY and VALUE.
792 - Function: sxhash OBJ
794 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
796 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
798 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
799 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
800 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
801 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
802 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
804 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
806 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
807 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
808 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
810 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
811 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
813 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
814 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
816 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
819 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
820 'case-fold-string-hash))
822 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
825 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
827 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
828 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
829 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
832 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
834 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
835 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
838 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
839 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
840 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
841 is too short to reach that column.
844 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
845 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
846 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
847 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
849 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
850 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
851 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
854 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
855 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
858 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
859 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
862 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
863 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
864 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
865 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
866 temporary-file-directory instead.
869 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
870 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
871 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
872 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
875 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
876 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
879 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
881 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
882 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
883 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
886 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
888 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
889 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
890 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
891 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
892 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
893 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
895 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
896 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
897 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
898 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
901 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
903 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
904 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
905 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
908 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
909 string where arguments appear in the result string.
913 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
915 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
916 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
919 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
922 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
924 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
925 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
928 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
930 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
931 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
937 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
938 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
940 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
941 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
942 to enable sound support.
944 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
945 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
946 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
947 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
948 sound to play, before playing the sound.
950 The following sound properties are supported:
954 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
955 searched relative to `data-directory'.
959 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
960 0..1. This property is optional.
962 Other properties are ignored.
964 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
966 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
968 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
969 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
970 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
971 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
973 ** New face implementation.
975 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
976 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
981 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
983 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
985 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
986 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
988 3. Font height in 1/10pt
990 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
992 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
998 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
1000 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
1002 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
1004 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
1006 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
1009 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
1010 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
1012 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
1013 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
1014 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
1015 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
1016 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
1017 attributes mentioned above.
1019 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
1020 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
1023 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
1024 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
1030 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
1031 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
1032 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
1033 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
1034 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
1035 results in a fully-specified face.
1038 *** Face realization.
1040 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
1041 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
1042 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
1043 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
1044 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
1045 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
1047 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
1048 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
1049 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
1050 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
1052 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
1053 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
1054 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
1055 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
1056 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
1058 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
1059 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
1060 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
1061 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
1062 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
1065 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
1066 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
1067 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
1068 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
1071 **** Clearing face caches.
1073 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
1074 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
1080 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
1081 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
1082 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
1084 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1085 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1086 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1087 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1088 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1090 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1091 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1092 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1094 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1096 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1097 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1098 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1099 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1100 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1101 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1102 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1104 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1105 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1111 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1112 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1115 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
1116 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
1117 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1118 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1119 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1122 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1124 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1127 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1129 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1131 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1132 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1133 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1135 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1136 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1137 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1138 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1139 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1140 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1141 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1142 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1143 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1144 of the face font sort order.
1146 - Function: x-font-family-list
1148 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1149 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1150 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1151 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1153 - Variable: font-list-limit
1155 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1156 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1157 matching font. The default is currently 100.
1160 *** Setting face attributes.
1162 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1163 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1164 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1167 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1168 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1170 The following attributes are recognized:
1174 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1175 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1176 and `?' are allowed.
1180 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1181 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1182 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1183 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1187 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
1192 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1193 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1194 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1198 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1199 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1202 `:foreground', `:background'
1204 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1208 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1209 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1210 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1215 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1216 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1217 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1222 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1223 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1224 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1225 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1229 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1230 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1231 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1232 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1233 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1234 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1235 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1236 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1237 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1238 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1239 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1240 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1241 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1242 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1243 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1244 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1249 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1250 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1254 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1255 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1256 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1257 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1258 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1259 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1261 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1262 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1266 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1267 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1268 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1271 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1272 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1273 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1275 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1278 *** Face attributes and X resources
1280 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1283 Face attribute X resource class
1284 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
1285 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1286 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1287 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1288 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1289 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1290 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1291 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1292 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1293 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1294 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1295 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1296 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1297 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
1298 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
1299 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1300 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1301 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1302 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1303 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1306 *** Text property `face'.
1308 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1309 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1310 specification can be
1312 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1314 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1315 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1316 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1317 for face attribute names.
1319 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1320 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1321 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1324 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1326 The function `face-register-tty-color' can be used to define colors
1327 for use on TTY frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the
1328 terminal. Emacs defines a couple of default color mappings by
1329 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
1330 `tty-defined-colors'. The function `face-clear-tty-colors' can be
1331 used to clear the mapping table.
1334 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
1336 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
1338 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1339 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1340 Otherwise, it returns zero.
1342 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
1344 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
1345 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
1348 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
1349 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
1350 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
1351 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
1352 commands continue into the next field if repeated.
1354 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
1355 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
1356 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
1358 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
1360 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
1362 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
1363 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1364 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
1365 constrained position if that is is different.
1367 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
1368 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
1369 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
1370 constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
1371 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1372 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
1375 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
1376 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
1377 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
1378 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
1379 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
1381 - Function: erase-field &optional POS
1383 Erases the field surrounding POS.
1384 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1385 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1387 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1389 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
1390 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1391 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1392 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
1393 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
1395 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1397 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
1398 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1399 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1400 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
1401 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
1403 - Function: field-string &optional POS
1405 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
1406 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1407 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1409 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
1411 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
1412 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1413 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1418 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
1419 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
1420 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
1421 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
1423 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
1424 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
1425 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
1426 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
1429 IMAGE is an image specification.
1431 *** Image specifications
1433 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
1434 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
1435 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
1436 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
1437 described below are ignored.
1439 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
1443 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
1444 of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
1448 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
1449 margin around the image. Default is 0.
1453 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
1458 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
1459 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
1460 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
1461 which is intended to display images "disabled."
1463 `:heuristic-mask BG'
1465 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
1466 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
1467 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
1468 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
1469 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
1470 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
1471 background of the image.
1475 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
1476 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
1477 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
1478 may be present in the image specification.
1480 *** Supported image types
1482 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
1484 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
1485 properties supported are
1489 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
1490 is the frame's foreground.
1494 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
1495 the frame's background color.
1497 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
1498 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
1499 instead of a `:file' property.
1503 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
1507 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
1513 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
1514 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
1516 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
1518 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
1521 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
1523 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
1524 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
1525 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
1526 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
1528 Additional image properties supported are:
1530 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
1532 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
1533 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
1536 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
1537 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
1541 DATA must be a string containing an XPM image. The contents of the
1542 string are of the same format as that of XPM files.
1544 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
1545 to display compressed images.
1547 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
1549 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
1550 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
1553 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
1555 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
1556 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1559 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
1561 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
1562 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1565 **** GIF, image type `gif'
1567 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
1568 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
1570 Additional image properties supported are:
1574 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
1575 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
1577 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
1578 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
1579 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
1582 (defun show-anim (file max)
1583 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
1584 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
1586 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
1589 (let ((img (create-image file nil :index idx)))
1592 (goto-char (point-min))
1593 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
1594 (insert-image img "x"))
1595 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
1597 **** PNG, image type `png'
1599 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
1600 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1603 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
1605 Additional image properties supported are:
1609 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
1610 integer. This is a required property.
1614 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
1615 must be a integer. This is an required property.
1619 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
1620 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
1621 files. This is an required property.
1623 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
1628 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
1629 which are supported in the current configuration.
1631 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
1632 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
1633 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
1636 *** Simplified image API, image.el
1638 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
1639 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
1640 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
1641 define an image based on available image types. The functions
1642 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
1648 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
1651 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
1652 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
1653 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
1654 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
1655 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
1656 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
1657 of the display margins.
1659 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
1660 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
1661 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
1662 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
1668 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
1669 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
1670 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
1671 that have a `help-echo' property.
1673 The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
1674 items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
1675 If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
1676 evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
1677 tool-bar item is used.
1679 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
1680 help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
1681 help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
1684 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
1686 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
1687 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
1689 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
1690 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
1691 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
1692 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
1695 (global-set-key [A-down]
1698 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1699 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
1700 (global-set-key [A-up]
1703 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1704 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
1707 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
1709 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
1710 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
1711 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
1712 is called with one argument, POS.
1714 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
1715 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
1716 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
1717 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
1718 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
1721 ** Tool bar support.
1723 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
1724 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
1725 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
1726 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
1727 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
1728 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
1730 *** Tool bar item definitions
1732 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
1733 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
1734 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
1736 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
1737 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
1738 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
1739 property (see below).
1741 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
1742 binding are currently ignored.
1744 The following properties are recognized:
1748 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
1753 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
1757 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
1758 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
1759 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
1761 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
1763 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
1764 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
1768 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
1769 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
1770 meaning of each of the four elements:
1772 Index Use when item is
1773 ----------------------------------------
1774 0 enabled and selected
1775 1 enabled and deselected
1776 2 disabled and selected
1777 3 disabled and deselected
1779 `:help HELP-STRING'.
1781 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
1782 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
1784 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
1786 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
1787 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
1788 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
1790 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
1791 raised when the mouse moves over them.
1793 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
1794 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
1795 pixels. Default is 1.
1797 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
1798 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
1800 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
1802 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
1805 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
1806 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
1807 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
1809 is the original tool bar item definition, then
1811 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
1813 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
1816 ** Mode line changes.
1819 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
1821 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
1822 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
1823 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
1825 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
1826 a `local-map' text property.
1828 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
1829 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
1831 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
1832 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
1833 `local-map' property.
1835 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
1836 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
1839 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
1840 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
1843 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
1844 variable mode-line-format to nil.
1847 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
1849 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
1850 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
1851 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
1852 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
1855 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
1858 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
1859 position in the header-line.
1862 ** Text property `display'
1864 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
1865 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
1866 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
1867 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
1869 *** Variable width and height spaces
1871 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
1872 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
1873 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
1874 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
1875 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
1876 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
1877 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
1879 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
1880 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
1881 properties described below.
1883 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
1884 characters having the `display' property.
1888 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
1889 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
1891 - :relative-width FACTOR
1893 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
1894 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
1895 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
1896 width of that character by FACTOR.
1900 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
1901 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
1903 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
1907 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
1910 - :relative-height FACTOR
1912 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
1913 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
1917 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
1918 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
1919 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
1922 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
1926 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
1927 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
1928 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
1929 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
1930 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
1931 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
1932 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
1933 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
1934 as display specification.
1936 *** Other display properties
1938 - :space-width FACTOR
1940 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
1941 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
1946 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
1948 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
1949 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
1950 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
1951 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
1952 a font is available counts as a step.
1954 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
1955 as tall as the frame's default font.
1957 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
1958 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
1960 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
1961 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
1965 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
1966 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
1967 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
1968 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
1969 `:height' subproperty.
1971 *** Conditional display properties
1973 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
1974 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
1975 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
1976 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
1977 the text having the `display' property.
1979 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
1983 ** New menu separator types.
1985 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
1986 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
1987 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
1988 to specify other menu separator types.
1990 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
1992 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
1995 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
1997 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
1999 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
2001 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
2003 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
2005 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2007 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
2009 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2011 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
2013 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
2014 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
2016 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
2018 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
2020 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
2022 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
2024 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
2026 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
2028 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
2030 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2032 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
2034 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
2036 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
2038 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2040 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
2042 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
2044 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
2045 the corresponding single-line separators.
2048 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
2050 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
2051 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
2052 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
2053 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
2054 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
2055 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
2056 default foreground is black.
2058 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
2059 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
2060 `ScrollBarBackground').
2062 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
2063 settings for scroll bar colors.
2066 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
2067 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
2070 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
2071 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
2072 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
2073 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
2074 the original window start.
2077 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
2078 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
2079 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
2082 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
2084 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
2085 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
2086 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
2087 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
2089 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
2090 fixed-width and fixed-height.
2092 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
2094 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
2095 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
2096 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
2097 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
2098 temporarily to nil, for example
2100 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
2101 (enlarge-window 10))
2103 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
2104 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
2106 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
2108 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
2109 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
2111 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
2113 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
2115 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
2116 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
2117 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
2119 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
2120 is the one that is used.
2122 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
2123 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
2124 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
2125 separate from the command's regular output.
2126 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
2127 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
2128 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
2131 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
2132 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
2133 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
2134 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
2136 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
2137 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
2138 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
2139 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
2141 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
2142 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
2143 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
2144 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
2146 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
2147 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
2148 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
2149 they never ignore case.
2151 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
2152 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
2153 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
2154 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
2155 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
2156 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
2157 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
2159 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
2160 the same format that was used in the file before.
2162 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
2163 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
2165 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
2166 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
2167 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
2169 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
2170 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
2171 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2172 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2173 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2174 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2175 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2177 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2178 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2179 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2180 format. You can now customize these variables.
2182 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2183 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2184 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2185 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2187 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2188 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2189 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2191 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2192 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2193 doesn't have any effect.
2195 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2198 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2199 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2200 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2202 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2203 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2204 `auto-show-mode' command.
2206 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2207 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2208 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2209 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2210 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2212 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2213 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2215 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2216 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2217 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2219 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2220 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2221 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2222 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2224 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2226 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2227 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2228 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2229 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2230 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2232 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2233 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2235 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2236 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2237 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2238 `?' on other systems.
2240 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2241 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2244 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2245 current codepage when it starts.
2249 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2250 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2251 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2252 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2253 buffer-file-coding-system.
2255 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2256 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2259 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2260 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2261 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2262 list of possible coding systems.
2266 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2267 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2268 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2269 docstring for details.
2271 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2272 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2273 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2274 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2275 lineup functions use this feature currently.
2277 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2278 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2280 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2281 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2283 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2284 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2285 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2286 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2289 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2290 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2292 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2293 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2294 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2295 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2297 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2298 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2299 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2300 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2301 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2303 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2305 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2307 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2308 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2310 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2312 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2313 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2314 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2315 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2316 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2320 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2321 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2322 Gnus manual for the full story.
2324 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2325 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2326 group, which is created automatically.
2328 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2331 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2333 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2334 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2336 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2339 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2341 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2342 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2344 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2346 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2347 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2349 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2350 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2352 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2353 control over simplification.
2355 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2357 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2360 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2362 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2364 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
2365 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2366 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2368 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2369 `a' forces normal posting method.
2371 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2374 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2377 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2378 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2380 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2383 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2385 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2387 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2388 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2390 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2391 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2393 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
2395 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
2398 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
2399 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
2401 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
2402 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
2404 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
2406 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
2408 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
2410 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
2412 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
2413 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
2414 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
2416 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
2417 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
2418 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
2419 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
2420 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
2422 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
2423 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
2424 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
2425 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
2427 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
2428 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
2429 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
2432 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
2434 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
2435 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
2437 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
2438 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
2439 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
2440 removed from the label.
2442 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
2443 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
2445 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
2446 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
2448 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
2449 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
2452 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
2454 ** New/deleted modes and packages
2456 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
2457 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
2459 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
2460 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
2461 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
2463 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
2464 changes with a special face.
2466 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
2467 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
2468 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
2470 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
2472 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
2473 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
2474 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
2475 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
2476 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
2478 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
2479 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
2480 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
2482 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
2483 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
2484 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
2485 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
2486 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
2487 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
2488 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
2489 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
2490 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
2492 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
2493 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
2494 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
2495 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
2496 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
2499 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
2500 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
2501 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
2502 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
2503 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
2504 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
2506 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
2507 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
2508 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
2509 was not documented clearly before.
2511 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
2512 This includes Tetris and Snake.
2514 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
2516 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
2517 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
2518 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
2519 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
2521 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
2522 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
2523 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
2525 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
2527 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
2528 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
2530 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
2531 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
2534 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
2535 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
2536 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
2537 file names and attributes are returned.
2539 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
2540 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
2541 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
2542 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
2545 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
2546 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
2548 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
2550 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
2551 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
2552 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
2555 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
2556 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
2559 The new function process-running-child-p
2560 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
2561 terminal to its own child process.
2563 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
2564 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
2565 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
2566 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
2568 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
2569 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
2571 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
2572 :included is an alias for :visible.
2574 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
2575 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
2576 to move or copy menu entries.
2578 ** Multibyte editing changes
2580 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
2581 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
2582 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
2583 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
2584 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
2585 (setq char (sref str idx)
2586 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
2587 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
2589 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
2590 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
2591 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
2593 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
2594 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
2595 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
2597 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
2599 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
2600 across the boundary.
2602 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
2603 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
2604 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
2605 contains 8-bit characters.
2606 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
2607 contains invalid characters.
2609 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
2610 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
2611 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
2612 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
2615 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
2616 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
2617 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
2618 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
2620 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
2621 compose Thai characters in a string.
2623 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
2624 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
2625 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
2626 menus should always use the third argument.
2628 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
2629 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
2630 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
2631 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
2633 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
2634 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
2635 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
2636 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
2638 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
2639 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
2640 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
2643 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
2645 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
2646 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
2647 requested feature cannot be loaded.
2649 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
2650 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
2651 means to clear out that attribute.
2653 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
2654 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
2656 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
2657 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
2658 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
2659 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
2661 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
2662 the gap of the current buffer.
2664 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
2665 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
2668 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
2669 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
2670 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
2671 it back in after any modifications have been made.
2673 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
2675 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
2676 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
2677 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
2678 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
2679 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
2681 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
2682 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
2683 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
2684 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
2685 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
2687 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
2688 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
2689 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
2691 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
2692 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
2693 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
2694 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
2695 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
2698 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
2699 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
2700 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
2701 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
2703 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
2705 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
2706 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
2707 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
2708 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
2710 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
2711 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
2712 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
2713 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
2714 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
2715 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
2716 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
2719 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
2722 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
2723 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
2724 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
2725 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
2726 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
2728 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
2729 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
2730 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
2731 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
2733 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
2734 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
2735 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
2736 something that most users not do.
2738 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
2739 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
2740 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
2743 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
2746 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
2747 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
2748 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
2749 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
2752 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
2753 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
2754 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
2755 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
2756 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
2759 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
2760 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
2761 to be confused by TeX commands.
2763 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
2764 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
2765 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
2766 of various alternative replacements and actions.
2768 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
2769 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
2770 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
2771 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
2772 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
2774 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
2775 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
2777 ** Changes in input method usage.
2779 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
2780 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
2783 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
2785 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
2786 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
2788 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
2789 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
2791 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
2793 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
2795 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
2796 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
2798 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
2799 given in the following case:
2800 o When you are using a complex input method.
2801 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
2803 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
2804 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
2805 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
2806 setting it to t is helpful.
2808 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
2810 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
2812 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
2813 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
2814 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
2815 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
2818 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
2819 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
2820 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
2823 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
2825 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
2827 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
2828 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
2830 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
2831 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
2832 its owner and group.
2834 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
2835 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
2837 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
2838 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
2840 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
2841 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
2842 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
2843 by the left edge of the rectangle.
2845 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
2846 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
2847 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
2848 for writing keyboard macros.
2850 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
2851 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
2852 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
2853 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
2854 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
2857 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
2859 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
2860 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
2863 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
2864 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
2865 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
2866 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
2868 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
2869 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
2870 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
2872 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
2873 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
2874 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
2875 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
2877 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
2878 failure if the command produces no output.
2880 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
2881 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
2884 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
2885 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
2886 function and variable names.
2888 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
2889 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
2890 file-coding-system-alist.
2892 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
2893 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
2894 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
2895 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
2896 according to the current fontset.
2898 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
2900 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
2901 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
2902 nonascii-insert-offset.
2904 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
2905 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
2906 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
2907 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
2909 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
2910 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
2912 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
2913 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
2915 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
2916 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
2919 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
2920 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
2922 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
2923 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
2924 all variables that have documentation.
2926 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
2927 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
2928 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
2929 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
2930 it should show; the default is 20.
2932 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
2933 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
2936 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
2937 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
2938 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
2939 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
2940 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
2941 Newly added options are included as well.
2943 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
2944 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
2945 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
2947 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
2950 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
2951 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
2953 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
2954 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
2957 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
2958 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
2961 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
2962 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
2963 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
2964 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
2967 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
2969 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
2970 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
2971 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
2973 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
2974 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
2975 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
2978 ** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
2979 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
2981 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
2982 read and post multi-lingual articles.
2984 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
2985 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
2986 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
2987 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
2988 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
2989 made invisible again.
2991 ** Mail reading and sending changes
2993 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
2994 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
2995 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
2998 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
2999 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
3000 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
3001 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
3002 rmail-default-body-file.
3004 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
3005 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
3006 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
3008 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
3009 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
3010 is evaluated to insert the signature.
3012 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
3013 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
3014 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
3015 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
3016 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
3017 especially interested in trying feedmail.
3019 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
3020 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
3021 provided by feedmail are:
3023 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
3024 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
3025 there is also a queue for draft messages
3027 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
3028 be prompted for confirmation
3030 **** does smart filling of address headers
3032 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
3033 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
3034 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
3036 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
3037 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
3038 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
3039 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
3043 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
3044 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
3046 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
3047 run Dired on the directory name at point.
3049 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
3050 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
3051 for a specified regexp.
3055 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
3058 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
3059 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
3062 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
3063 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
3064 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
3065 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
3067 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
3068 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
3069 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
3070 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
3071 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
3073 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
3074 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
3075 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
3076 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
3077 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
3079 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
3080 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
3081 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
3082 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
3084 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
3085 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
3086 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
3088 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
3089 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
3090 session to resolve them.
3092 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
3093 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
3094 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
3097 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
3098 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
3099 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
3100 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
3101 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
3102 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
3105 ** Changes in Font Lock
3107 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
3108 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
3109 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
3110 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
3111 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
3113 ** Frame name display changes
3115 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
3116 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
3117 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
3118 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
3120 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
3121 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
3124 ** Comint (subshell) changes
3126 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
3127 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
3128 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
3130 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
3132 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
3133 that is, the line after the last line you got.
3134 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
3136 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
3137 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
3140 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
3141 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
3142 previously sent input.
3144 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
3145 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
3146 as the search string.
3148 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
3149 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
3153 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
3154 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
3155 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
3158 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
3159 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
3160 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
3161 style is still the default however.
3163 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
3165 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
3166 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
3167 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
3169 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
3170 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
3172 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3173 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3175 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3176 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3178 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3179 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3181 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3182 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3183 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3184 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3186 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
3188 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
3189 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3190 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3192 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3193 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3194 expanding dynamically.
3196 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3197 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3199 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3200 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3201 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3202 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3204 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3206 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3208 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3209 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3210 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3211 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3212 against the first word in the title.
3214 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3215 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3216 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
3217 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
3218 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
3219 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
3221 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3222 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3223 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3224 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3226 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
3228 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3229 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3230 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3231 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3232 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3233 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3235 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3236 Editing group once the package is loaded.
3238 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3239 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3240 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3242 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3243 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3247 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3248 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
3249 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3251 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
3252 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3253 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3254 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
3257 o URLs are automatically skipped
3258 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3260 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3262 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3264 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3265 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3266 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3267 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3269 *** New recursive parser.
3271 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3272 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3273 recursive parser scans the individual files.
3275 *** Parsing only part of a document.
3277 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3278 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3279 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3281 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3283 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
3285 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3287 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3289 *** Using multiple selection buffers
3291 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3292 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3294 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3296 *** References to external documents.
3298 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3299 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3300 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3301 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3302 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3303 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3304 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3306 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3308 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3309 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3311 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3312 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3314 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3316 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3317 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3319 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3321 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3322 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3323 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3324 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3325 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3326 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3329 *** Support for the varioref package
3331 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3335 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3336 and citations are created. These hooks are
3337 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3338 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
3340 *** Citations outside LaTeX
3342 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3343 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3345 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
3347 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3348 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3351 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3353 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3354 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3355 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3356 directories that contain the same file name.
3358 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3359 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3360 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3361 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3362 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3363 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3364 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3367 ** New modes and packages
3369 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3370 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3371 it, but some do not.
3373 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3376 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3377 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3380 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3382 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3383 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3384 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3385 established system of notation similar to Chess.
3387 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3388 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3389 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3391 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3392 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
3393 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
3394 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
3395 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
3398 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
3399 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
3401 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
3402 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
3403 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
3404 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
3406 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
3408 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
3409 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
3410 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
3411 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
3412 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
3413 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
3414 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
3415 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
3416 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
3417 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
3418 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
3420 Platform-specific modes:
3422 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
3423 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
3424 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
3425 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
3426 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
3427 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
3428 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
3429 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
3430 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
3432 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3434 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
3435 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
3436 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
3437 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
3439 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
3440 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
3441 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
3443 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
3444 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
3445 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
3446 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
3448 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
3449 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
3450 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
3453 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
3454 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
3455 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
3456 current input method for reading this one event.
3458 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
3459 now control whether to output certain characters as
3460 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
3461 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
3462 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
3463 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
3465 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3467 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
3468 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
3470 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
3471 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
3472 always increases point by 1.
3474 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
3475 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
3477 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
3479 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
3480 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
3481 default value changed. For example,
3483 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
3488 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
3491 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
3492 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
3493 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
3494 `:version' in the top level group.
3496 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
3498 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
3499 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
3501 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
3502 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
3503 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
3506 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
3507 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
3510 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
3511 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
3512 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
3514 ** Frame-local variables.
3516 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
3517 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
3518 local bindings for that variable.
3520 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
3521 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
3522 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
3525 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
3526 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
3527 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
3528 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
3530 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
3531 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
3532 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
3533 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
3535 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
3536 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
3537 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
3538 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
3539 See the documentation in sregex.el.
3541 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
3542 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
3543 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
3544 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
3546 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
3547 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
3549 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
3550 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
3551 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
3553 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
3554 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
3555 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
3556 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
3558 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
3559 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
3562 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
3563 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
3564 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
3565 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
3566 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
3568 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
3569 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
3570 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
3571 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
3573 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
3574 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
3575 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
3576 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
3577 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
3579 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
3580 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
3581 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
3582 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
3584 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
3585 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
3586 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
3588 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
3589 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
3590 was directed to display this buffer.
3592 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
3593 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
3594 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
3595 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
3596 set-window-configuration.
3598 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
3599 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
3600 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
3601 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
3603 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
3604 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
3605 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
3607 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
3608 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
3609 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
3611 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
3612 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
3614 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
3615 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
3617 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
3618 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
3619 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
3621 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
3622 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
3623 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
3624 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
3628 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
3629 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
3632 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
3633 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
3634 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
3635 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
3636 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
3638 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
3640 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
3641 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
3642 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
3643 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
3646 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
3647 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
3648 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
3649 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
3650 The supported properties include
3652 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3654 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3655 item should appear in the menu.
3657 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
3658 which will be REAL-BINDING.
3659 It should return a binding to use instead.
3661 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
3662 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
3663 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
3664 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
3665 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
3668 This means that the command normally has no
3669 keyboard equivalent.
3670 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
3671 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
3672 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
3673 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
3674 value says whether this button is currently selected.
3676 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
3677 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
3679 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
3683 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
3684 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
3685 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
3686 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
3688 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
3690 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3691 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
3692 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
3693 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
3694 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
3695 forward, away from the user.
3697 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3699 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
3700 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
3701 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
3702 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
3703 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
3705 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
3707 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3708 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
3709 that were dragged and dropped.
3711 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3713 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
3715 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
3716 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
3717 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
3719 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
3720 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
3721 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
3723 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
3724 in Emacs 19 and before.
3726 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
3727 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
3729 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
3730 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
3731 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
3732 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
3734 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
3735 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
3736 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
3737 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
3738 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
3740 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
3741 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
3742 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
3743 consistent with the new representation.
3745 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
3746 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
3747 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
3748 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3750 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
3751 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
3752 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
3754 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
3755 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
3756 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3758 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
3759 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
3760 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
3762 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3763 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
3765 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3766 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
3768 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
3769 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
3770 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
3771 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
3773 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
3774 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
3776 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
3777 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
3778 buffer or string being searched.
3780 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
3781 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
3782 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
3783 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
3784 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
3785 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
3786 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
3788 *** Structure of coding system changed.
3790 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
3791 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
3792 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
3793 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
3794 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
3795 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
3796 define-coding-system-alias.
3798 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
3799 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
3800 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
3801 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
3802 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
3803 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
3804 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
3807 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
3808 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
3809 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
3810 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
3812 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
3813 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
3814 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
3815 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
3817 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
3818 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
3819 This function requires a user interaction.
3821 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
3822 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
3823 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
3824 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
3825 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
3826 select-safe-coding-system.
3828 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
3829 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
3830 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
3833 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
3834 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
3835 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
3837 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
3838 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
3839 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
3840 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
3842 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
3843 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
3844 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
3847 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
3848 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
3850 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
3851 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
3852 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
3853 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
3854 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
3855 range of characters.
3857 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
3858 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
3860 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
3861 in the current buffer at position POS.
3863 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
3864 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
3865 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
3866 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
3867 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
3868 binding input-method-function to nil.
3870 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
3871 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
3872 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
3873 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
3874 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
3876 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
3877 subsequent events of a key sequence.
3879 *** You can customize any language environment by using
3880 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
3882 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
3883 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
3884 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
3885 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
3886 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
3888 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
3890 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
3891 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
3892 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
3895 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
3896 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
3898 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
3899 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
3900 in your .emacs file.)
3902 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
3903 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
3905 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
3906 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
3908 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
3909 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
3912 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
3913 delete the character before point, as usual.
3915 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
3916 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
3917 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
3919 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
3920 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
3921 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
3922 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
3923 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
3926 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
3927 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
3928 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
3929 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
3930 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
3932 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
3933 and is an alias for it.
3935 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
3936 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
3938 ** Scrolling changes
3940 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
3941 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
3943 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
3944 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
3947 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
3948 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
3949 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
3950 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
3952 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
3953 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
3954 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
3955 recenters the window.
3957 ** International character set support (MULE)
3959 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
3960 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
3961 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
3962 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
3963 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
3964 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
3966 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
3967 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
3968 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
3969 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
3970 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
3972 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
3973 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
3974 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
3975 language, to make it possible to type them.
3977 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
3978 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
3980 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
3981 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
3983 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
3985 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
3987 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
3988 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
3989 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
3990 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
3991 characters for their work until they want to change.
3995 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
3996 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
3997 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
3998 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
3999 support several input methods.
4001 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
4002 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
4005 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
4006 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
4007 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
4008 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
4009 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
4012 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
4013 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
4014 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
4015 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
4016 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
4018 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
4019 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
4020 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
4021 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
4023 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
4024 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
4025 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
4026 the first guess is wrong.
4028 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
4029 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
4031 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
4032 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
4033 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
4034 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
4036 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
4037 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
4038 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
4039 translate automatically to and from either one.
4041 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
4043 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
4044 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
4045 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
4048 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
4049 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
4050 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
4051 multibyte characters in that buffer.
4053 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
4054 character conversion as well.
4056 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
4058 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
4059 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
4060 requires using many fonts.
4062 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
4063 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
4065 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
4066 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
4067 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
4068 you would use a font.
4070 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
4071 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
4072 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
4074 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
4075 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
4076 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
4077 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
4078 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
4080 *** Defining fontsets.
4082 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
4083 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
4084 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
4086 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
4087 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
4088 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
4089 standard fontset are created automatically.
4091 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
4092 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
4093 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
4094 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
4095 name is `fontset-startup'.
4097 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
4098 The resource value should have this form:
4099 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
4100 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
4101 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
4102 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
4103 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
4104 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
4105 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
4106 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
4107 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
4109 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
4110 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
4111 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
4113 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
4114 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
4116 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
4117 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
4118 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
4119 Here is the substitution rule:
4120 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
4121 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
4122 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
4123 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
4124 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
4126 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
4127 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
4128 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
4130 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
4131 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
4132 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
4133 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
4136 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
4137 defaults for a particular choice of language.
4139 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
4140 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
4141 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
4142 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
4143 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
4144 system for new files that you create.
4146 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
4147 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
4148 whole Emacs session.
4150 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
4151 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
4152 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
4154 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
4155 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
4156 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
4157 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
4158 coding systems that Emacs supports.
4160 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
4161 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
4162 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
4163 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
4164 is used for *the immediately following command*.
4166 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
4167 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
4169 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
4170 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
4172 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4173 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4175 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4176 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4177 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4178 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4181 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4182 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4183 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4184 translated into that character code.
4186 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4187 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4189 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4191 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4192 the coding system for keyboard input.
4194 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4195 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4196 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4198 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4200 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4201 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4202 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4203 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4204 designed to work with terminals.
4206 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4207 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4208 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4209 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4210 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4211 in the corresponding buffer.
4213 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4215 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4216 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4217 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4219 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4220 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4221 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4224 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4225 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4227 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4228 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4229 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4230 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4232 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4233 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4234 related information.
4236 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4237 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4240 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4241 information about the support for a particular language.
4242 You specify the language as an argument.
4244 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4245 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4248 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4249 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4250 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
4251 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4253 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4255 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4256 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4257 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4258 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4259 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4260 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4261 K euc-korea (Korean)
4264 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4267 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4268 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4269 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4273 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4274 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4275 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4276 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4278 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4279 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4281 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4282 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4283 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4284 Rmail files themselves.
4286 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4287 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4289 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4292 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4293 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4294 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4295 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4296 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4298 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4299 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4300 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4303 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4304 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4305 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4306 without any conversion.
4308 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4309 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4310 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4311 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4313 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4314 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4316 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4317 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4319 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4320 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4322 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4323 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4324 in the buffer before point.
4326 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4327 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4330 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4331 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4333 ** File locking works with NFS now.
4335 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4336 in the same directory as FILENAME.
4338 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4339 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4340 can become a bottleneck.
4342 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4343 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4344 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4345 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4346 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4347 so useful that the change is worth while.
4349 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4350 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4351 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4352 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4354 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4355 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4358 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4359 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4360 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4362 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4363 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4364 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4366 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4367 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4368 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4370 ** Changes in View mode.
4372 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4373 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4375 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4376 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4378 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4381 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4382 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4384 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4385 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4386 not just the selected window.
4388 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4389 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4390 turns View mode on or off.
4392 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
4393 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
4394 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
4396 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
4397 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
4399 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
4400 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
4401 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
4402 which version to compare with.
4404 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
4405 blocks if a match is inside the block.
4407 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
4408 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
4409 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
4410 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
4412 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
4413 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
4414 blocks, all of them or none.
4416 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
4417 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
4420 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
4421 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
4422 However, the mode will not be changed if
4423 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
4424 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
4425 not suitable for ordinary files, or
4426 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
4428 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
4430 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
4431 these commands do not change the major mode.
4433 ** M-x occur changes.
4435 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
4436 it performs a case-sensitive search.
4438 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
4439 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
4440 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
4442 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
4443 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
4444 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
4445 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
4446 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
4448 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
4449 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
4450 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
4451 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
4453 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4454 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
4455 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
4457 ** Outline mode changes.
4459 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
4461 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
4463 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
4464 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
4465 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
4468 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
4469 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
4472 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
4473 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
4475 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
4477 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4478 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
4479 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
4480 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
4482 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
4483 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
4484 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
4486 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
4487 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
4490 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
4491 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
4492 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
4493 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
4495 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
4496 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
4497 can be. The default value is 30.
4499 ** Changes in Mail mode.
4501 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
4502 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
4503 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
4504 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
4505 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
4508 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
4509 compose-mail-other-frame.
4511 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
4512 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
4513 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
4514 buffer that shows the original message.
4516 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
4517 with separator lines around the contents.
4519 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
4520 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
4521 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
4522 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
4524 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
4526 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
4527 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
4528 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
4529 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
4531 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
4532 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
4535 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
4536 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
4539 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
4540 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
4541 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
4542 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
4544 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
4545 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
4546 be taken to be magic.
4548 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
4549 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
4550 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
4552 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
4553 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
4555 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
4556 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
4558 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
4560 new key dired.el binding old key
4561 ------- ---------------- -------
4562 * c dired-change-marks c
4564 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
4565 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
4566 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
4568 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
4569 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
4570 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
4571 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
4572 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
4573 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
4577 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
4578 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
4579 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
4580 each time you run it.
4582 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
4583 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
4585 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
4586 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
4587 means to move in the opposite direction.
4589 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
4590 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
4592 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
4593 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
4594 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
4595 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
4600 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
4602 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
4605 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
4606 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
4608 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
4611 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
4613 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
4615 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
4617 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
4618 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
4619 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
4621 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
4623 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
4625 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
4626 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
4628 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
4629 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
4630 used to pick articles.
4632 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
4633 another have been added.
4635 `M-x gnus-change-server'
4637 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
4638 generating lines in buffers.
4640 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
4643 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
4645 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
4647 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
4649 *** Scores can be decayed.
4651 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
4653 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
4654 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
4656 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
4659 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
4661 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
4662 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
4664 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
4666 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
4667 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
4669 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
4670 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
4672 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
4675 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
4676 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
4678 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
4680 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
4682 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
4684 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
4686 Use the `Y c' command.
4688 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
4690 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
4692 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
4694 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
4695 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
4697 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
4699 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
4701 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
4702 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
4704 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
4706 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
4707 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
4708 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
4709 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
4712 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
4713 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
4714 particular news group. This can be done by:
4716 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
4718 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
4719 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
4720 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
4721 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
4722 for reading and posting).
4724 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
4725 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
4726 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
4727 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
4730 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
4731 default. Here are some of these default settings:
4733 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
4734 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
4735 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
4736 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
4737 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
4739 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
4740 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
4744 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
4745 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
4746 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
4747 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
4748 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
4751 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
4752 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
4753 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
4754 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
4755 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
4756 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
4758 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
4759 of the current buffer.
4761 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
4762 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
4763 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
4765 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
4766 style that the Python developers like.
4768 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
4769 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
4770 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
4774 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
4775 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
4776 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
4778 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
4779 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
4782 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
4783 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
4785 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
4786 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
4787 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
4788 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
4790 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
4791 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
4793 ** Calendar changes.
4795 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
4796 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
4797 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
4801 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
4803 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
4805 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
4806 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
4807 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
4808 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
4809 It defaults to `letter'.
4810 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
4812 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
4813 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
4814 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
4816 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
4817 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
4820 *** Horizontal layout
4822 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
4823 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
4824 All are measured in points.
4828 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
4829 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
4830 All are measured in points.
4834 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
4835 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
4836 margin above the text.
4838 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
4839 framing box is printed around the header.
4841 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
4842 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
4844 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
4845 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
4846 `ps-header-font-size'.
4850 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
4851 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
4852 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
4853 elements to this alist.
4855 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
4856 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
4858 ** hideshow changes.
4860 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
4863 *** Support for java-mode added.
4865 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
4866 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
4868 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
4869 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
4870 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
4872 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
4873 robust and a lot faster.
4875 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
4877 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
4878 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
4879 documentation for more details.
4881 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
4883 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
4884 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
4885 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
4886 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
4887 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
4889 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
4890 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
4891 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
4892 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
4898 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
4899 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
4900 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
4901 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
4902 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
4903 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
4905 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
4907 *** Maximum decoration
4909 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
4910 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
4911 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
4912 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
4913 to get the old behavior.
4917 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
4919 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
4920 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
4922 *** Configurable support
4924 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
4925 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
4926 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
4927 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
4928 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
4929 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
4930 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
4932 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
4933 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
4934 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
4936 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
4938 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
4939 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
4942 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
4944 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
4950 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
4951 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
4952 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
4953 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
4955 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
4957 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
4958 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
4959 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
4961 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
4963 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
4964 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
4965 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
4966 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
4967 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
4968 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
4969 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
4971 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
4972 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
4973 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
4974 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
4975 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
4976 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
4978 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
4980 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
4981 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
4982 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
4983 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
4985 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
4988 ** Ada mode changes.
4990 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
4991 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
4992 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
4993 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
4996 *** There are two new commands:
4997 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
4998 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
5000 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
5001 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
5002 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
5004 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
5005 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
5006 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
5008 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
5009 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
5010 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
5011 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
5013 ** Scheme mode changes.
5015 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
5016 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
5017 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
5018 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
5021 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
5022 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
5023 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
5024 variables as buffer-local variables.
5026 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
5029 ** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
5030 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
5033 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
5034 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
5035 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
5037 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
5038 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
5041 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
5042 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
5044 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
5045 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
5048 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
5049 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
5050 these register values no longer become completely useless.
5051 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
5052 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
5053 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
5055 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
5056 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
5057 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
5058 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
5060 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
5061 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
5062 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
5063 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
5064 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
5066 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
5067 since it applies only to the current frame.
5069 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
5070 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
5071 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
5073 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
5074 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
5075 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
5076 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
5077 instead of just the file you are editing.
5081 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
5082 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
5083 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
5084 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
5085 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
5088 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
5089 knows which kind of label is needed.
5091 C-c ) reftex-reference
5092 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
5093 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
5095 C-c [ reftex-citation
5096 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
5097 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
5099 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
5100 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
5103 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
5104 can quickly jump to every section.
5106 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
5107 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
5108 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
5109 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
5110 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
5112 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5114 *** Info documentation is now available.
5116 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
5117 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
5119 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
5120 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
5122 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
5123 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
5125 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
5126 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
5127 appropriate functions.
5129 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
5130 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
5132 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
5135 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
5136 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
5138 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
5141 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
5142 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
5143 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
5145 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
5146 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
5147 prefixed with `ALT'.
5149 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
5150 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
5151 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
5154 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
5155 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
5156 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
5158 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
5159 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
5161 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
5162 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
5163 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
5165 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
5167 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
5169 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
5172 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5173 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5176 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5179 *** Added support for imenu.
5181 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5182 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5183 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5184 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5186 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5187 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5189 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5191 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5192 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5193 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5196 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5197 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5199 ** browse-url changes
5201 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5202 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5203 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5204 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5205 customization variables.
5207 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5209 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5210 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5211 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5215 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5216 pops up the Info file for this command.
5218 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5219 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5220 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
5223 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
5224 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
5225 files in the same directory.
5227 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
5228 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5229 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5233 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
5234 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
5236 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
5237 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
5238 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5239 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5240 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5241 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5242 color when Viper is in insert state.
5243 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5244 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5245 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5249 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5250 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5251 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5252 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5253 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5255 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5257 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5258 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5260 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5261 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5262 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5264 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5265 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5266 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5267 methods and protocols.
5269 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5270 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5271 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5274 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5275 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5276 at least M times and as many as N times.
5278 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5279 in files has changed slightly.
5281 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5282 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5283 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5284 with old time-stamp-format values.
5286 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5287 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5288 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5291 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5292 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5293 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5294 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5295 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5296 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5298 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5299 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5300 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5302 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5303 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5304 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5305 recommended now will continue to work then.
5307 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5310 ** There are some additional major modes:
5312 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5313 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5314 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5316 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5317 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5320 ** New Lisp packages include:
5322 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5324 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5325 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5327 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5329 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5332 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5333 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5336 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5337 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5338 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5339 strings or comments.
5341 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5342 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5343 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5344 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5347 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5348 can visit them by short forms of their names.
5350 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5351 Emacs Lisp function at point.
5353 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5355 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5356 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5358 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5360 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5362 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5364 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5365 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5367 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5368 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5369 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5370 original place after inserting the copy.
5372 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5375 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5376 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5377 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5379 Enable mouse-drag with:
5380 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
5382 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
5384 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
5385 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
5387 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
5388 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
5392 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
5393 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
5394 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
5395 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
5396 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
5397 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
5398 instance) and vice versa.
5400 To use this package load it using
5401 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
5402 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
5403 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
5404 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
5405 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
5406 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
5408 *** Interface to ph.
5410 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
5412 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
5413 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
5416 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
5418 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
5419 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
5420 while the real cursor does not move.
5422 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
5423 for visiting your favorite web sites.
5425 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
5426 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
5430 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
5431 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
5432 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
5433 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
5435 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
5437 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
5439 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
5441 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
5442 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
5443 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
5444 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
5445 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
5447 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
5448 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
5449 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
5450 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
5451 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
5452 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
5454 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
5456 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
5457 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
5458 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
5459 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
5461 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
5462 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
5464 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
5465 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
5468 ** Basic Lisp changes
5470 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
5471 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
5473 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
5474 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
5477 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
5479 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
5481 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
5482 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
5484 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
5485 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
5488 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
5490 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
5492 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
5494 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
5495 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
5496 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
5499 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
5500 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
5501 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
5503 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
5504 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
5505 adding one of these suffixes.
5507 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
5508 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
5509 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
5511 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
5512 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
5514 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
5516 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
5517 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
5519 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
5520 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
5522 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
5524 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
5525 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
5527 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
5528 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
5529 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
5530 works using `save-current-buffer'.
5532 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
5533 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
5536 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
5537 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
5538 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
5541 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
5542 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
5545 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
5547 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
5548 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
5549 Then it returns that string.
5551 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
5553 (with-output-to-string
5554 (princ "The buffer is ")
5555 (princ (buffer-name)))
5557 returns "The buffer is foo".
5559 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
5562 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
5563 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
5564 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
5566 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
5567 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
5569 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
5570 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
5571 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
5572 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
5573 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
5574 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
5576 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
5577 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
5578 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
5581 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
5582 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
5583 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
5584 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
5585 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
5587 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
5588 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
5589 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
5590 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
5592 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
5593 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
5595 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
5597 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
5598 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
5599 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
5600 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
5603 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
5604 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
5607 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
5609 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
5610 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
5611 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
5612 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
5613 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
5615 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
5617 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
5618 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
5619 more than the number of characters.
5621 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
5622 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
5623 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
5624 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
5625 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
5626 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
5628 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
5629 and returns a string containing those characters.
5631 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
5632 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
5633 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
5634 character, sref signals an error.
5636 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
5637 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
5638 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5640 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
5641 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
5642 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5644 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
5645 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
5646 to a vector of the characters in it.
5648 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
5649 of a string. You call it as follows:
5651 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
5653 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
5654 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
5655 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
5656 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
5657 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
5659 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
5660 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5662 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
5663 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5665 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
5666 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
5667 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
5668 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
5670 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
5672 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
5674 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
5675 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
5676 are not included in the resulting value.
5678 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
5679 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
5680 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
5681 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
5683 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
5684 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
5685 character extends across that column), then the padding character
5686 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
5687 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
5688 column START-COLUMN.
5690 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
5691 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
5692 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
5693 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
5694 changed text, before the change.
5696 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
5697 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
5698 one character set for each script, not for each language.
5700 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
5702 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
5704 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
5705 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
5707 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
5708 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
5709 which identify the character within that character set.
5711 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
5712 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
5713 opposite of split-char.
5715 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
5716 of all the characters between BEG and END.
5718 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
5719 of all the characters in a string.
5721 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
5722 and specifying coding systems.
5724 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
5725 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
5726 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
5727 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
5728 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
5729 as what to do about code conversion.)
5731 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
5732 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
5734 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5735 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5736 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
5738 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5739 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
5740 to match against a file name.
5742 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5743 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5744 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5745 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5746 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5747 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5749 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5750 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5752 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
5753 the coding system to use for network sockets.
5755 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5756 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
5757 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
5760 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5761 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5762 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5763 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5764 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5765 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5767 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5768 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5770 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5771 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5772 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
5773 start the subprocess.
5775 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
5776 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
5777 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
5778 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
5779 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
5781 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
5782 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
5785 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
5786 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
5787 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
5788 connection permanently or until overridden.
5790 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
5791 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
5792 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
5793 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
5794 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
5795 system for one operation at a time.
5797 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
5798 files, subprocesses or network connections.
5800 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
5801 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
5802 The value is a cons cell,
5803 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
5804 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
5805 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
5806 input to the subprocess.
5808 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
5809 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
5811 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
5812 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
5813 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
5815 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
5816 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
5817 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
5818 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
5821 Thus, instead of writing
5823 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
5824 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
5826 you would now write this:
5828 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
5829 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
5833 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
5834 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
5835 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
5836 for a description of them.
5838 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
5839 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
5841 (defgroup ispell nil
5842 "Spell checking using Ispell."
5845 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
5846 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
5847 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
5848 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
5849 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
5851 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
5852 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
5853 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
5854 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
5855 first-level subgroups.
5857 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
5859 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
5860 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
5864 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
5865 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
5866 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
5867 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
5868 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
5869 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
5871 ** Text property changes
5873 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
5876 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
5877 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
5878 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
5879 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
5880 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
5882 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
5883 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
5884 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
5885 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
5887 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
5888 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
5889 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
5891 ** Changes in invisibility features
5893 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
5894 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
5895 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
5896 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
5897 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
5898 make the overlay visible.
5900 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
5901 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
5902 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
5903 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
5904 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
5905 t when it should hide it.
5907 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
5909 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
5910 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
5911 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
5912 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
5913 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
5914 Here is an example of how to do this:
5916 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
5917 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5918 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
5919 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5922 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
5925 ;; When done with the overlays:
5926 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5928 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5930 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
5932 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
5933 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
5934 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
5935 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
5937 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
5938 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
5939 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
5941 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
5942 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
5944 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
5945 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
5947 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
5948 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
5949 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
5951 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
5952 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
5953 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
5954 determine the syntax type of the character.
5956 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
5957 of the current buffer.
5959 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
5960 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
5961 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
5963 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
5964 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
5965 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
5966 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
5967 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
5969 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
5972 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
5973 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
5974 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
5976 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
5977 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
5978 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
5979 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
5980 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
5982 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
5983 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
5984 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
5986 ** Changes in face features
5988 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
5989 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
5991 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
5992 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
5994 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
5995 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
5997 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
5998 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
6000 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
6001 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
6002 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
6003 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
6006 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
6007 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
6009 ** Changes in file-handling functions
6011 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
6012 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
6013 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
6014 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
6016 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
6019 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
6020 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
6022 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
6023 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
6025 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
6026 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
6028 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
6029 character code conversion as well as other things.
6031 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
6032 (formerly it did not).
6034 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
6035 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
6037 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
6038 instead of constant strings.
6040 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
6041 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
6042 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
6044 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
6045 in the same way as before.
6047 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
6048 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
6049 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
6051 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
6052 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
6053 else, and returns nil.
6055 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
6056 directory cannot be listed.
6058 ** Changes in minibuffer input
6060 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
6061 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
6062 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
6063 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
6066 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
6067 It is available through the history command M-n.
6069 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
6070 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
6071 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
6072 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
6073 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
6075 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
6076 argument in this way.
6078 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
6079 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
6080 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
6082 ** Echo area features
6084 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
6085 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
6086 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
6087 after the echo area is cleared.
6089 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
6090 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
6092 ** Keyboard input features
6094 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
6095 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
6097 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
6098 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
6101 ** Frame-related changes
6103 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
6104 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
6105 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
6107 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
6108 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
6109 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
6111 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6112 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
6113 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
6114 in the selected frame.
6116 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
6117 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
6118 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
6120 ** X Windows features
6122 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
6123 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
6124 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
6126 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
6127 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
6129 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
6130 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
6131 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
6133 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
6134 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
6136 ** Subprocess features
6138 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
6139 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
6142 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
6143 and returns the output from the command as a string.
6145 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
6146 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
6148 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
6149 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
6151 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
6152 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
6153 goes after the other menu items.
6155 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
6156 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
6157 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
6160 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
6161 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
6163 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
6164 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
6167 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
6168 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
6169 but its hook is still run.
6171 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6172 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6174 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6175 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6176 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6178 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6179 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6180 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6183 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6184 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6186 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6187 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6188 functions like display-time.
6190 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6191 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6193 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6194 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6195 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6197 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6198 if there is an error in compilation.
6200 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6201 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6202 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6203 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6205 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6206 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6207 the *scratch* buffer.
6209 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6210 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6211 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6212 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6214 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6215 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6216 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6218 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6219 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6220 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
6221 and compose-mail-other-frame.
6223 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
6224 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
6225 full name of the specified user will be returned.
6227 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
6228 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6229 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6230 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6231 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6234 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6235 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6236 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6237 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6239 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6240 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6241 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6242 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6244 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6246 ** imenu.el changes.
6248 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
6249 item from menu created by imenu.
6251 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6252 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6253 select one of those items.
6255 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6257 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6259 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6260 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6262 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6263 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6264 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6266 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6268 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6269 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6271 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6272 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6273 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6274 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6275 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6278 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6279 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6281 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6282 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6283 as in previous Emacs versions.
6285 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6286 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6287 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6290 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6291 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6292 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6293 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6296 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6297 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6298 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6299 line and then executing the macro.
6301 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6303 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6304 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6305 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6310 *** Font Lock support modes
6312 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6313 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6314 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6315 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6316 Font Lock mode is enabled.
6318 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6320 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6326 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6327 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6328 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6329 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6330 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6331 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6332 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6334 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6336 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6338 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6340 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6342 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6345 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6350 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6351 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6352 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6353 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6355 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6356 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6358 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
6359 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6362 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6363 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6365 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6367 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6369 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6371 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
6374 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6376 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6378 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
6380 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
6382 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
6385 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
6387 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
6389 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
6391 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
6393 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
6395 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
6397 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
6399 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
6402 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
6404 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
6407 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
6409 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
6410 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
6412 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
6414 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
6416 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
6418 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
6420 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
6423 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
6425 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
6426 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
6428 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
6429 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
6430 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
6432 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
6433 articles with the `*' command.
6435 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
6437 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
6439 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
6441 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
6443 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
6444 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
6446 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
6449 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
6451 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
6453 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
6455 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
6457 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
6459 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
6461 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
6463 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
6465 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
6467 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
6468 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
6470 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
6473 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
6475 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
6476 buffer to allow easier treatment.
6478 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
6480 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
6482 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
6484 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
6487 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
6489 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
6491 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
6492 cited text to hide is now customizable.
6494 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
6496 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
6498 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
6500 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
6502 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
6504 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
6507 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
6509 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
6510 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
6511 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
6514 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
6517 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
6520 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
6521 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
6524 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
6525 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
6526 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
6527 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
6528 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
6531 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
6533 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
6535 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
6536 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
6537 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
6538 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
6539 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
6541 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
6542 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
6543 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
6545 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
6547 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
6548 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
6549 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
6550 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
6551 chapter of the manual for details.
6553 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
6554 customization variables take effect.
6556 ** Marking with the mouse.
6558 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
6559 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
6560 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
6562 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
6564 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
6566 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
6567 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
6569 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
6570 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
6571 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
6572 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
6573 applications, these problems are significant.
6575 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
6576 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
6577 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
6578 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
6579 other DOS application as a subprocess.
6581 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
6582 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
6584 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
6585 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
6586 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
6587 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
6588 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
6589 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
6591 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
6593 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
6594 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
6595 minibuffer contains.
6597 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
6599 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
6600 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
6601 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
6602 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
6604 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
6605 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
6606 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
6607 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
6609 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
6610 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
6612 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
6613 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
6614 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
6616 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
6617 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
6618 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
6619 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
6621 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
6623 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
6624 to replace the characters it "deletes".
6626 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
6628 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
6629 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
6630 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
6631 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
6632 immediately after the selected one.
6634 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
6635 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
6637 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
6639 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
6640 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
6641 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
6642 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
6645 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
6646 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
6649 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
6650 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
6651 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
6652 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
6653 now that the bug is fixed.
6655 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
6657 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
6658 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
6659 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
6660 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
6662 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
6663 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
6664 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
6665 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
6667 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
6668 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
6669 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
6671 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
6672 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
6673 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
6674 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
6677 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
6678 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
6680 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
6681 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
6682 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
6683 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
6685 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
6686 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
6687 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
6688 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
6689 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
6690 `mail-directory-stream'.)
6692 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
6693 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
6694 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
6695 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
6697 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
6698 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
6699 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
6701 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
6702 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
6703 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
6704 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
6705 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
6706 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
6707 to a limitation in font-lock).
6709 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
6711 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
6712 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
6713 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
6716 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
6717 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
6719 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6721 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
6723 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
6725 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
6727 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
6728 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
6729 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
6730 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
6731 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
6732 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
6734 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
6737 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
6738 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
6740 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
6745 *** Global Font Lock mode
6747 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
6748 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
6749 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
6750 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
6751 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
6753 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
6755 (global-font-lock-mode t)
6759 *** Local Refontification
6761 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
6762 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
6763 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
6764 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
6766 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
6767 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
6768 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
6769 above and below point.
6771 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
6775 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
6776 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
6777 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
6778 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
6779 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
6782 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
6784 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
6785 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
6787 ** hide-show changes.
6789 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
6790 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
6793 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
6794 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
6796 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
6797 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
6798 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
6802 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
6803 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
6805 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
6806 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
6808 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
6810 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
6811 pressing both mouse buttons.
6813 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
6814 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
6817 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
6820 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
6822 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
6823 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
6825 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
6827 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
6829 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
6831 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
6833 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
6835 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
6837 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
6838 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
6839 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
6840 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
6841 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
6843 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
6845 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
6846 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
6847 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
6850 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
6853 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
6855 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
6856 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
6858 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
6859 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
6861 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
6862 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
6863 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
6865 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
6866 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
6869 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6871 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
6872 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
6873 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
6875 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
6876 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
6877 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
6879 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
6880 up if too much time passes.
6882 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
6884 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
6885 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
6886 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
6889 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
6890 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
6891 call looks like this:
6893 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6895 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
6896 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
6897 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
6900 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
6901 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
6904 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
6905 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
6906 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
6907 each time Emacs becomes idle.
6909 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
6910 idle for SECS seconds.
6912 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
6913 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
6914 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
6917 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
6918 there is no answer within a certain time.
6920 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
6922 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
6923 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
6924 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
6926 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
6927 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
6928 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
6929 arguments in between are ignored.
6931 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
6932 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
6934 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
6935 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
6936 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
6937 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
6940 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
6941 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
6942 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
6943 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
6944 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
6945 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
6947 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
6948 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
6949 systems with limited file name syntax.
6951 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
6952 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
6953 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
6956 (defvar save-completions-file-name
6957 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
6958 "*The filename to save completions to.")
6960 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
6961 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
6962 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
6963 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
6964 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
6966 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
6967 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
6968 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
6970 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
6971 marker from its buffer position.
6973 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
6974 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
6975 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
6977 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
6978 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
6979 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
6980 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
6981 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
6982 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
6984 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
6985 errors that happen often during editing.
6987 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
6988 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
6989 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
6991 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
6992 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
6994 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
6995 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
6996 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
6997 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
6998 and not get-buffer-window.
7000 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
7001 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
7002 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
7004 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
7005 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
7006 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
7007 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
7008 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
7009 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
7010 over and over for the same text.
7012 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
7014 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
7015 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
7017 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
7020 in addition to the normal
7024 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
7025 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
7026 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
7028 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7030 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
7031 Copyright information:
7033 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7035 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7036 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7037 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7038 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7040 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7041 of this document, or of portions of it,
7042 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7043 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7047 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"