1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2001-03-15
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 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
8 Temporary note: +++ indicates that the appropriate manual
9 has already been updated. --- means no change in the manuals
12 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.3
14 ** Emacs now supports new configure options `--program-prefix',
15 `--program-suffix' and `--program-transform-name' that affect the names of
19 * Changes in Emacs 21.3
21 ** jit-lock can now be delayed with `jit-lock-defer-time'.
22 If it is set to 0.5, fontification will only happen after 0.5s of idle time.
24 ** If you hit M-C-SPC (mark-sexp) repeatedly, the marked region
25 will now be extended each time, so you can mark the next two sexps with
26 M-C-SPC M-C-SPC, for example.
28 ** mouse-wheels can now scroll a specific fraction of the window
29 (rather than a fixed number of lines) and the scrolling is `progressive'.
31 ** The keyboard-coding-system is now automatically set based on
32 your current locale settings. If it turns out that your terminal
33 does not support the encoding implied by your locale (for example,
34 it inserts non-ASCII chars if you hit M-i), you will need to add
36 (set-keyboard-coding-system nil)
38 to your .emacs to revert to the old behavior.
41 ** Emacs now reads the standard abbrevs file ~/.abbrev_defs
42 automatically at startup, if it exists. And it always offers to save
43 abbrevs (if you have changed them) when if offers to save modified
46 ** Display of hollow cursors now obeys the buffer-local value (if any)
47 of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' in the buffer that the cursor
50 ** The default values of `tooltip-delay' and `tooltip-hide-delay'
53 ** On terminals whose erase-char is ^H (Backspace), Emacs
54 now uses normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.
57 ** The command line option --no-windows has been changed to
58 --no-window-system. The old one still works, but is deprecated.
60 ** `buffer-menu' and `list-buffers' now list buffers whose names begin
61 with a space, if they visit files.
63 ** You can now customize fill-nobreak-predicate to control where
64 filling can break lines. We provide two sample predicates,
65 fill-single-word-nobreak-p and fill-french-nobreak-p.
67 ** New user option `add-log-always-start-new-record'.
68 When this option is enabled, M-x add-change-log-entry will always
69 start a new record regardless of when the last record is.
71 ** New user option `sgml-xml'.
72 When this option is enabled, SGML tags are inserted in XML style,
73 i.e., there is always a closing tag.
74 When not customized, it becomes buffer-local when it can be inferred
75 from the file name or buffer contents.
77 ** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from
78 initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode,
79 instead of using default-major-mode.
81 ** Byte compiler warning and error messages have been brought more
82 in line with the output of other GNU tools.
84 ** Lisp-mode now uses font-lock-doc-face for the docstrings.
86 ** perl-mode has a new variable `perl-indent-continued-arguments'.
88 ** `special-display-buffer-names' and `special-display-regexps' now
89 understand two new boolean pseudo-frame-parameters `same-frame' and
92 ** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
93 much pure storage it will approximately need.
95 ** M-x setenv now expands environment variables of the form `$foo' and
96 `${foo}' in the specified new value of the environment variable. To
97 include a `$' in the value, use `$$'.
100 ** File-name completion can now ignore directories.
101 If an element of the list in `completion-ignored-extensions' ends in a
102 slash `/', it indicates a subdirectory that should be ignored when
103 completing file names. Elements of `completion-ignored-extensions'
104 which do not end in a slash are never considered when a completion
105 candidate is a directory.
107 ** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'.
108 When loading many files, for instance with `emacs *', Emacs normally
109 displays a buffer menu. This option turns the buffer menu off.
111 ** Rmail now displays 5-digit message ids in its summary buffer.
113 ** When using M-x revert-buffer in a compilation buffer to rerun a
114 compilation, it is now made sure that the compilation buffer is reused
115 in case it has been renamed.
117 ** On MS Windows, the "system caret" now follows the cursor.
118 This enables Emacs to work better with programs that need to track
119 the cursor, for example screen magnifiers and text to speech programs.
122 ** A French translation of the `Emacs Survival Guide' is available.
125 ** A French translation of the Emacs Tutorial is available.
127 ** New modes and packages
130 *** Calc is now part of the Emacs distribution.
132 Calc is an advanced desk calculator and mathematical tool written in
133 Emacs Lisp. Its documentation is in a separate manual; within Emacs,
134 type "C-h i m calc RET" to read that manual. A reference card is
135 available in `etc/calccard.tex' and `etc/calccard.ps'.
138 *** The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is now part of the distribution.
140 The ELisp reference manual in Info format is built as part of the
141 Emacs build procedure and installed together with the Emacs User
144 *** The ruler-mode.el library provides a minor mode for displaying an
145 "active" ruler in the header line. You can use the mouse to visually
146 change the `fill-column', `window-margins' and `tab-stop-list'
149 *** master-mode.el implements a minor mode for scrolling a slave
150 buffer without leaving your current buffer, the master buffer.
152 It can be used by sql.el, for example: the SQL buffer is the master
153 and its SQLi buffer is the slave. This allows you to scroll the SQLi
154 buffer containing the output from the SQL buffer containing the
157 This is how to use sql.el and master.el together: the variable
158 sql-buffer contains the slave buffer. It is a local variable in the
161 (add-hook 'sql-mode-hook
164 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
165 (add-hook 'sql-set-sqli-hook
167 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
170 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.3
172 ** jit-lock obeys a new text-property `jit-lock-defer-multiline'.
173 If a piece of text with that property gets contextually refontified
174 (see jit-lock-defer-contextually), then all of that text will
175 be refontified. This is useful when the syntax of a textual element
176 depends on text several lines further down (and when font-lock-multiline
177 is not appropriate to solve that problem). For example in Perl:
185 Adding/removing the last `e' changes the `bar' from being a piece of
186 text to being a piece of code, so you'd put a jit-lock-defer-multiline
187 property over the second half of the command to force (deferred)
188 refontification of `bar' whenever the `e' is added/removed.
190 ** describe-vector now takes a second argument `describer' which is
191 called to print the entries' values. It default to `princ'.
193 ** defcustom and other custom declarations now use a default group
194 (the last group defined in the same file) when no :group was given.
196 ** emacsserver now runs pre-command-hook and post-command-hook when
197 it receives a request from emacsclient.
199 ** The default value of paragraph-start and indent-line-function has
200 been changed to reflect the one used in text-mode rather than the one
201 used in indented-text-mode.
203 ** If a major mode function has a non-nil `no-clone-indirect'
204 property, `clone-indirect-buffer' signals an error if you use
207 ** If you set `query-replace-skip-read-only' non-nil,
208 `query-replace' and related functions simply ignore
209 a match if part of it has a read-only property.
211 ** In `replace-match', the replacement replacement text no longer
212 inherits properties from surrounding text.
214 ** New function `buffer-local-value'.
216 - Function: buffer-local-value variable buffer
218 This function returns the buffer-local binding of VARIABLE (a symbol)
219 in buffer BUFFER. If VARIABLE does not have a buffer-local binding in
220 buffer BUFFER, it returns the default value of VARIABLE instead.
222 ** The default value of `paragraph-start' and `indent-line-function' has
223 been changed to reflect the one used in Text mode rather than the one
224 used in Indented Text mode.
226 ** New function `text-clone-create'. Text clones are chunks of text
227 that are kept identical by transparently propagating changes from one
230 ** font-lock can manage arbitrary text-properties beside `face'.
231 *** the FACENAME returned in font-lock-keywords can be a list
232 of the form (face FACE PROP1 VAL1 PROP@ VAL2 ...) so you can set
233 other properties than `face'.
234 *** font-lock-extra-managed-props can be set to make sure those extra
235 properties are automatically cleaned up by font-lock.
237 ** The new function `run-mode-hooks' and the new macro `delay-mode-hooks'
238 are used by define-derived-mode to make sure the mode hook for the
239 parent mode is run at the end of the child mode.
241 ** `provide' and `featurep' now accept an optional second argument
242 to test/provide subfeatures. Also `provide' now checks `after-load-alist'
243 and run any code associated with the provided feature.
245 ** The variable `compilation-parse-errors-filename-function' can
246 be used to transform filenames found in compilation output.
249 ** Functions `file-name-sans-extension' and `file-name-extension' now
250 ignore the leading dots in file names, so that file names such as
251 `.emacs' are treated as extensionless.
253 ** Functions `user-uid' and `user-real-uid' now return floats if the
254 user UID doesn't fit in a Lisp integer. Function `user-full-name'
255 accepts a float as UID parameter.
257 ** `define-key-after' now accepts keys longer than 1.
259 ** `define-derived-mode' now accepts nil as the parent.
261 ** The local variable `no-byte-compile' in elisp files is now obeyed.
263 ** New functions `keymap-prompt' and `current-active-maps'.
265 ** New function `describe-buffer-bindings'.
267 ** New vars `exec-suffixes' and `load-suffixes' used when
268 searching for an executable resp. an elisp file.
270 ** Variable aliases have been implemented
272 - Macro: defvaralias ALIAS-VAR BASE-VAR
274 This defines the symbol ALIAS-VAR as a variable alias for symbol
275 BASE-VAR. This means that retrieving the value of ALIAS-VAR returns
276 the value of BASE-VAR, and changing the value of ALIAS-VAR changes the
279 - Function: indirect-variable VARIABLE
281 This function returns the variable at the end of the chain of aliases
282 of VARIABLE. If VARIABLE is not a symbol, or if VARIABLE is not
283 defined as an alias, the function returns VARIABLE.
285 It might be noteworthy that variables aliases work for all kinds of
286 variables, including buffer-local and frame-local variables.
288 ** Functions from `post-gc-hook' are run at the end of garbage
289 collection. The hook is run with GC inhibited, so use it with care.
291 ** If the second argument to `copy-file' is the name of a directory,
292 the file is copied to that directory instead of signaling an error.
294 ** The variables most-positive-fixnum and most-negative-fixnum
295 have been moved from the CL package to the core.
299 *** The new package syntax.el provides an efficient way to find the
300 current syntactic context (as returned by parse-partial-sexp).
302 *** The TCL package tcl-mode.el was replaced by tcl.el.
303 This was actually done in Emacs-21.1 was not documented.
306 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
308 See the INSTALL file for information on installing extra libraries and
309 fonts to take advantage of the new graphical features and extra
310 charsets in this release.
312 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
314 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
316 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
317 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
320 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
321 support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the
322 maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions. Changes to
323 build on other 64-bit systems should be straightforward modulo any
324 necessary changes to unexec.
326 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
327 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
329 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
330 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
332 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
333 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
335 ** This version can be built for the Macintosh, but does not implement
336 all of the new display features described below. The port currently
337 lacks unexec, asynchronous processes, and networking support. See the
338 "Emacs and the Mac OS" appendix in the Emacs manual, for the
339 description of aspects specific to the Mac.
341 ** Note that the MS-Windows port does not yet implement various of the
342 new display features described below.
345 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
347 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
349 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
350 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
351 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
352 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
355 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
357 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
358 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
359 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
360 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
363 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
364 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
365 under Lisp changes, below.
367 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
369 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
370 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
371 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
372 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
373 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
374 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
377 The command-line options `-fg COLOR', `-bg COLOR', and `-rv' are now
378 supported on character terminals.
380 Emacs automatically remaps all X-style color specifications to one of
381 the colors supported by the terminal. This means you could have the
382 same color customizations that work both on a windowed display and on
383 a TTY or when Emacs is invoked with the -nw option.
385 ** New default font is Courier 12pt under X.
389 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
390 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
391 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
392 You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes' to enable
395 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
397 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
398 longer than one line, Emacs can resize the minibuffer window unless it
399 is on a frame of its own. You can control resizing and the maximum
400 minibuffer window size by setting the following variables:
402 - User option: max-mini-window-height
404 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
405 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
406 specifies a number of lines.
410 - User option: resize-mini-windows
412 How to resize mini-windows. If nil, don't resize. If t, always
413 resize to fit the size of the text. If `grow-only', let mini-windows
414 grow only, until they become empty, at which point they are shrunk
417 Default is `grow-only'.
421 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see
422 <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will need version 0.92.26, or later.
424 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
426 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
427 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
430 ** File selection dialog on MS-Windows is supported.
432 When a file is visited by clicking File->Open, the MS-Windows version
433 now pops up a standard file selection dialog where you can select a
434 file to visit. File->Save As also pops up that dialog.
436 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
438 Emacs now uses toolkit scroll bars if available. When configured for
439 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scroll bar. Otherwise, when
440 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
441 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
442 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
445 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
446 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
447 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
448 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
449 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
450 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
452 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
453 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
454 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
455 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
456 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
457 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
459 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
460 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
461 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
462 imake configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
463 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
467 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
468 of how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level
469 changes. Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is
470 displayed and is on by default. The appearance of the bar is improved
471 if Emacs has been built with XPM image support. Otherwise monochrome
474 To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons
475 for specific modes (with copyright assignments). Contributions would
476 also be useful to touch up some of the PBM icons manually.
480 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
481 mouse position. The Lisp package `tooltip' implements them. You can
482 turn them off via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
484 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
485 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
486 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
487 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
489 ** Automatic Hscrolling
491 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
492 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
495 If a window is scrolled horizontally with set-window-hscroll, or
496 scroll-left/scroll-right (C-x <, C-x >), this serves as a lower bound
497 for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will scroll
498 the text more to the left if necessary, but won't scroll the text more
499 to the right than the column set with set-window-hscroll etc.
501 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
502 of its own. By default, when a window is selected, the cursor is
503 solid; otherwise, it is hollow. The user-option
504 `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to display the
505 cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is shown, if
506 non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown.
508 ** Fringes to the left and right of windows are used to display
509 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
510 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
511 customizing face `fringe'.
513 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default.
514 You can change its appearance by modifying the face `mode-line'.
515 In particular, setting the `:box' attribute to nil turns off the 3D
516 appearance of the mode line. (The 3D appearance makes the mode line
517 occupy more space, and thus might cause the first or the last line of
518 the window to be partially obscured.)
520 The variable `mode-line-inverse-video', which was used in older
521 versions of emacs to make the mode-line stand out, is now deprecated.
522 However, setting it to nil will cause the `mode-line' face to be
523 ignored, and mode-lines to be drawn using the default text face.
525 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
527 Different parts of the mode line have been made mouse-sensitive on all
528 systems which support the mouse. Moving the mouse to a
529 mouse-sensitive part in the mode line changes the appearance of the
530 mouse pointer to an arrow, and help about available mouse actions is
531 displayed either in the echo area, or in the tooltip window if you
534 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
536 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line goes to the next buffer.
538 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name goes to the previous buffer.
540 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
541 `*') toggles the status.
543 - Mouse-3 on the mode name displays a minor-mode menu.
547 Emacs can optionally display an hourglass pointer under X. You can
548 turn the display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
552 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
553 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
554 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
557 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
559 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
560 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
561 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
564 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
565 have to do anything to activate it.
567 ** The default binding of the Delete key has changed.
569 The new user-option `normal-erase-is-backspace' can be set to
570 determine the effect of the Delete and Backspace function keys.
572 On window systems, the default value of this option is chosen
573 according to the keyboard used. If the keyboard has both a Backspace
574 key and a Delete key, and both are mapped to their usual meanings, the
575 option's default value is set to t, so that Backspace can be used to
576 delete backward, and Delete can be used to delete forward. On
577 keyboards which either have only one key (usually labeled DEL), or two
578 keys DEL and BS which produce the same effect, the option's value is
579 set to nil, and these keys delete backward.
581 If not running under a window system, setting this option accomplishes
582 a similar effect by mapping C-h, which is usually generated by the
583 Backspace key, to DEL, and by mapping DEL to C-d via
584 `keyboard-translate'. The former functionality of C-h is available on
585 the F1 key. You should probably not use this setting on a text-only
586 terminal if you don't have both Backspace, Delete and F1 keys.
588 Programmatically, you can call function normal-erase-is-backspace-mode
589 to toggle the behavior of the Delete and Backspace keys.
591 ** The default for user-option `next-line-add-newlines' has been
592 changed to nil, i.e. C-n will no longer add newlines at the end of a
595 ** The <home> and <end> keys now move to the beginning or end of the
596 current line, respectively. C-<home> and C-<end> move to the
597 beginning and end of the buffer.
599 ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the
600 recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is
603 ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
604 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
606 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
607 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
610 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs's byte
611 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
614 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
616 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
617 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
618 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
620 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
621 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
622 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
624 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
627 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
629 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
630 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
631 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
632 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
633 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
636 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
637 all frames except the selected one.
639 ** The new user-option `confirm-kill-emacs' can be customized to
640 let Emacs ask for confirmation before exiting.
642 ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs
643 header-line (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window),
644 so that it remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled.
645 This behavior may be disabled by customizing the option
646 `Info-use-header-line'.
648 ** Polish, Czech, German, and French translations of Emacs' reference card
649 have been added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex', `cs-refcard.tex',
650 `de-refcard.tex' and `fr-refcard.tex'. Postscript files are included.
652 ** An `Emacs Survival Guide', etc/survival.tex, is available.
654 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
655 `dired-ref.tex'. A French translation is available in
658 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
659 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
660 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
661 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
663 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable through Customize.
665 You can no longer use `M-x customize-variable' to customize `load-path'
666 because it now contains a version-dependent component. You can still
667 use `add-to-list' and `setq' to customize this variable in your
668 `~/.emacs' init file or to modify it from any Lisp program in general.
670 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
671 point in a pop-up window.
673 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
674 under XFree86. To enable this, use the `mouse-wheel-mode' command, or
675 customize the variable `mouse-wheel-mode'.
677 The variables `mouse-wheel-follow-mouse' and `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'
678 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
680 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
681 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
682 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
683 You can customize `auto-save-list-file-prefix' to change this location.
685 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
687 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
688 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
690 ** The new command M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET will delete the
691 trailing whitespace within the current restriction. You can also add
692 this function to `write-file-hooks' or `local-write-file-hooks'.
694 ** When visiting a file with M-x find-file-literally, no newlines will
695 be added to the end of the buffer even if `require-final-newline' is
698 ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be
699 set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a
700 file that is already visited under a different name.
702 ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to
703 nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size.
705 ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name
706 and displays information about that.
708 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
709 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
711 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
712 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
713 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
714 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
715 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
716 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
718 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
719 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
721 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
722 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
723 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
724 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
725 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
726 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
727 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
729 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
730 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
732 ** The new Custom option `keyboard-coding-system' specifies a coding
733 system for keyboard input.
735 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
736 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
737 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
738 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
739 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
740 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
741 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
742 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
743 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
745 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
746 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
748 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
749 displays all characters in that character set.
751 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
752 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
754 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
755 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
756 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
758 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
759 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
760 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
761 GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet but recent X releases have
762 8859-15. See etc/INSTALL for information on obtaining extra fonts.
763 There are new Leim input methods for Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix (only)
766 ** New language environments `Dutch' and `Spanish'.
767 These new environments mainly select appropriate translations
770 ** In Ethiopic language environment, special key bindings for
771 function keys are changed as follows. This is to conform to "Emacs
772 Lisp Coding Convention".
774 new command old-binding
775 --- ------- -----------
776 f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-buffer f5
777 S-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-region f5
778 C-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-mail-or-marker f5
780 f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-buffer unchanged
781 S-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-region unchanged
782 C-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-mail-or-marker unchanged
784 S-f5 ethio-toggle-punctuation f3
785 S-f6 ethio-modify-vowel f6
786 S-f7 ethio-replace-space f7
787 S-f8 ethio-input-special-character f8
788 S-f9 ethio-replace-space unchanged
789 C-f9 ethio-toggle-space f2
791 ** There are new Leim input methods.
792 New input methods "turkish-postfix", "turkish-alt-postfix",
793 "greek-mizuochi", "TeX", and "greek-babel" are now part of the Leim
796 ** The rule of input method "slovak" is slightly changed. Now the
797 rules for translating "q" and "Q" to "`" (backquote) are deleted, thus
798 typing them inserts "q" and "Q" respectively. Rules for translating
799 "=q", "+q", "=Q", and "+Q" to "`" are also deleted. Now, to input
800 "`", you must type "=q".
802 ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO
803 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display
804 more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of
805 empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a
806 window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this
809 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
810 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
811 defined in newcomment.el. You can choose different styles of region
812 commenting with the variable `comment-style'.
814 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
815 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
816 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
817 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
819 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
820 on the display using several methods
822 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
823 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
824 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
826 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
827 equivalent to specifying the frame parameter.
829 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
831 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
832 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
834 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
835 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
836 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
837 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
839 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
840 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
841 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
843 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
844 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
846 ** New X resources recognized
848 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
849 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
850 is useful for debugging X problems.
854 emacs.synchronous: true
856 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
857 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
858 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
859 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
860 visual class names are
869 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
870 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
873 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
874 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
875 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
880 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
882 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
883 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
884 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
885 resource values are `true' or `on'.
889 emacs.privateColormap: true
891 ** Faces and frame parameters.
893 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
894 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
895 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
896 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
897 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
898 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
899 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
901 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
902 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
903 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
904 `default' face and vice versa.
908 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
910 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
912 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
913 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
914 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
915 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
917 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
918 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
919 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
921 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
924 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
926 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
927 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
928 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
929 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
931 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
933 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
935 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
937 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
940 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
943 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
945 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
946 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
947 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
949 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
950 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi and Less).
952 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
953 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
954 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
956 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
958 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
959 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggressively' is a
960 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
961 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
963 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
964 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggressively' is a
965 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
966 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
968 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
969 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
970 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
973 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
975 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
976 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
977 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
979 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
980 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
981 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
982 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
983 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
984 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
986 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
988 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
989 notably at the end of lines.
991 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
992 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
994 ** The function `replace-rectangle' is an alias for `string-rectangle'.
996 ** The new command M-x string-insert-rectangle is like `string-rectangle',
997 but inserts text instead of replacing it.
999 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
1000 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
1001 after each match to get the replacement text.
1003 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
1004 you edit the replacement string.
1006 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB'
1007 (if you load the library `mailabbrev'), lets you complete mail aliases
1008 in the text, analogous to lisp-complete-symbol.
1010 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
1012 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
1013 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
1015 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
1016 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
1017 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
1018 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
1021 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
1022 read mail from the menu etc.
1024 ** The environment variable `EMACSLOCKDIR' is no longer used on MS-Windows.
1025 This environment variable was used when creating lock files. Emacs on
1026 MS-Windows does not use this variable anymore. This change was made
1027 before Emacs 21.1, but wasn't documented until now.
1029 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
1030 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
1032 ** The new command `msdos-set-mouse-buttons' forces the MS-DOS version
1033 of Emacs to behave as if the mouse had a specified number of buttons.
1034 This comes handy with mice that don't report their number of buttons
1035 correctly. One example is the wheeled mice, which report 3 buttons,
1036 but clicks on the middle button are not passed to the MS-DOS version
1039 ** Customize changes
1041 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
1042 `State' menu to add comments, or give a prefix argument to
1043 M-x customize-set-variable or M-x customize-set-value. Note that
1044 customization comments will cause the customizations to fail in
1045 earlier versions of Emacs.
1047 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
1048 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
1051 *** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it
1052 does not allow you to save customizations in your `~/.emacs' init
1053 file. This is because saving customizations from such a session would
1054 wipe out all the other customizationss you might have on your init
1057 ** New features in evaluation commands
1059 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
1060 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
1061 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the new
1062 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
1063 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
1065 The default values for the first two of these variables are 12 and 4
1066 respectively, which means that `eval-expression' now prints at most
1067 the first 12 members of a list and at most 4 nesting levels deep (if
1068 the list is longer or deeper than that, an ellipsis `...' is
1071 <RET> or <mouse-2> on the printed text toggles between an abbreviated
1072 printed representation and an unabbreviated one.
1074 The default value of eval-expression-debug-on-error is t, so any error
1075 during evaluation produces a backtrace.
1077 *** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
1078 code when called with a prefix argument.
1082 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
1083 current user setups (although it's believed that these
1084 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
1085 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
1086 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
1087 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
1090 *** The hardcoded switch to "java" style in Java mode is gone.
1091 CC Mode used to automatically set the style to "java" when Java mode
1092 is entered. This has now been removed since it caused too much
1095 However, to keep backward compatibility to a certain extent, the
1096 default value for c-default-style now specifies the "java" style for
1097 java-mode, but "gnu" for all other modes (as before). So you won't
1098 notice the change if you haven't touched that variable.
1100 *** New cleanups, space-before-funcall and compact-empty-funcall.
1101 Two new cleanups have been added to c-cleanup-list:
1103 space-before-funcall causes a space to be inserted before the opening
1104 parenthesis of a function call, which gives the style "foo (bar)".
1106 compact-empty-funcall causes any space before a function call opening
1107 parenthesis to be removed if there are no arguments to the function.
1108 It's typically useful together with space-before-funcall to get the
1109 style "foo (bar)" and "foo()".
1111 *** Some keywords now automatically trigger reindentation.
1112 Keywords like "else", "while", "catch" and "finally" have been made
1113 "electric" to make them reindent automatically when they continue an
1114 earlier statement. An example:
1116 for (i = 0; i < 17; i++)
1118 res += a[i]->offset;
1121 Here, the "else" should be indented like the preceding "if", since it
1122 continues that statement. CC Mode will automatically reindent it after
1123 the "else" has been typed in full, since it's not until then it's
1124 possible to decide whether it's a new statement or a continuation of
1127 CC Mode uses Abbrev mode to achieve this, which is therefore turned on
1130 *** M-a and M-e now moves by sentence in multiline strings.
1131 Previously these two keys only moved by sentence in comments, which
1132 meant that sentence movement didn't work in strings containing
1133 documentation or other natural language text.
1135 The reason it's only activated in multiline strings (i.e. strings that
1136 contain a newline, even when escaped by a '\') is to avoid stopping in
1137 the short strings that often reside inside statements. Multiline
1138 strings almost always contain text in a natural language, as opposed
1139 to other strings that typically contain format specifications,
1140 commands, etc. Also, it's not that bothersome that M-a and M-e misses
1141 sentences in single line strings, since they're short anyway.
1143 *** Support for autodoc comments in Pike mode.
1144 Autodoc comments for Pike are used to extract documentation from the
1145 source, like Javadoc in Java. Pike mode now recognize this markup in
1146 comment prefixes and paragraph starts.
1148 *** The comment prefix regexps on c-comment-prefix may be mode specific.
1149 When c-comment-prefix is an association list, it specifies the comment
1150 line prefix on a per-mode basis, like c-default-style does. This
1151 change came about to support the special autodoc comment prefix in
1154 *** Better handling of syntactic errors.
1155 The recovery after unbalanced parens earlier in the buffer has been
1156 improved; CC Mode now reports them by dinging and giving a message
1157 stating the offending line, but still recovers and indent the
1158 following lines in a sane way (most of the time). An "else" with no
1159 matching "if" is handled similarly. If an error is discovered while
1160 indenting a region, the whole region is still indented and the error
1161 is reported afterwards.
1163 *** Lineup functions may now return absolute columns.
1164 A lineup function can give an absolute column to indent the line to by
1165 returning a vector with the desired column as the first element.
1167 *** More robust and warning-free byte compilation.
1168 Although this is strictly not a user visible change (well, depending
1169 on the view of a user), it's still worth mentioning that CC Mode now
1170 can be compiled in the standard ways without causing trouble. Some
1171 code have also been moved between the subpackages to enhance the
1172 modularity somewhat. Thanks to Martin Buchholz for doing the
1175 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
1176 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
1177 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
1178 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
1179 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
1182 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
1183 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
1184 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
1185 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
1186 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
1187 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
1189 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
1190 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
1191 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
1192 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
1193 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
1194 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
1195 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
1196 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
1198 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
1199 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
1200 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
1201 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
1204 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
1205 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
1206 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
1207 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
1208 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
1209 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
1210 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
1211 function documentation for more info.
1213 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
1214 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
1215 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
1216 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
1217 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
1218 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
1219 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
1220 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
1222 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
1224 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
1225 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
1227 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
1228 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
1229 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
1230 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
1231 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
1234 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
1235 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
1236 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
1239 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
1240 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
1241 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
1242 chapter about this in the manual.
1244 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
1245 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
1246 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
1247 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
1248 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
1250 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
1251 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
1252 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
1254 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
1255 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
1257 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
1258 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
1259 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
1262 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
1263 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
1264 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
1265 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
1268 **** The variables `c-hanging-comment-starter-p' and
1269 `c-hanging-comment-ender-p', which controlled how comment starters and
1270 enders were filled, are not used anymore. The new version of the
1271 function `c-fill-paragraph' keeps the comment starters and enders as
1272 they were before the filling.
1274 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
1275 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
1276 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
1279 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
1280 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
1281 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
1282 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
1285 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
1286 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
1287 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
1288 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
1289 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1291 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1292 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1293 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1295 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1297 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1298 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1299 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1300 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1302 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1303 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1304 the column specified by comment-column.
1306 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1307 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1308 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1309 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1310 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1311 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1313 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1314 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1317 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1319 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1320 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1321 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1322 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1325 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1329 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
1330 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
1331 is, delete only empty directories.
1333 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
1334 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
1335 copy directories recursively.
1337 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
1338 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
1339 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
1341 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
1342 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
1345 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `y') shows
1346 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
1347 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
1348 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
1349 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
1351 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
1354 *** Dired commands that prompt for a destination file now allow the use
1355 of the `M-n' command in the minibuffer to insert the source filename,
1356 which the user can then edit. This only works if there is a single
1357 source file, not when operating on multiple marked files.
1361 The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in
1362 four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment,
1363 internationalization and mail-fetching.
1365 *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the
1366 many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone.
1368 If you used procmail like in
1370 (setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
1371 (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail)
1372 (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/")
1373 (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in")
1375 this now has changed to
1378 '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/"
1381 More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods ->
1382 Getting Mail -> Mail Sources
1384 *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of
1385 Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details.
1386 Separate MIME packages like RMIME, mime-compose etc., will probably no
1387 longer work; remove them and use the native facilities.
1389 The FLIM/SEMI package still works with Emacs 21, but if you want to
1390 use the native facilities, you must remove any mailcap.el[c] that was
1391 installed by FLIM/SEMI version 1.13 or earlier.
1393 *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many
1394 parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. There
1395 are built-in facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is
1396 now just a compatibility layer.
1398 *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in
1401 *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be
1402 called to position point.
1404 *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in
1405 summary buffers and NOV files.
1407 *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number
1408 of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added.
1410 *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a
1411 subtly different manner.
1413 *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive
1414 and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with
1415 ever-changing layouts.
1417 *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap.
1419 *** There is image support of various kinds and some sound support.
1421 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
1423 *** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
1427 -------------------------
1431 C-c C-c q @quotation
1433 C-c C-o @<block> ... @end <block>
1436 *** The " key now inserts either " or `` or '' depending on context.
1438 ** Changes in Outline mode.
1440 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
1441 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
1442 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
1444 ** Changes to Emacs Server
1446 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
1447 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
1448 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
1449 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
1450 buffers to kill, as before.
1452 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
1453 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
1456 ** Both emacsclient and Emacs itself now accept command line options
1457 of the form +LINE:COLUMN in addition to +LINE.
1459 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
1461 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
1462 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
1463 use. Default is 1000.
1465 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
1466 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
1468 ** Changes to hideshow.el
1470 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
1472 A block is now recognized by its start and end regexps (both strings),
1473 and an integer specifying which sub-expression in the start regexp
1474 serves as the place where a `forward-sexp'-like function can operate.
1475 See the documentation of variable `hs-special-modes-alist'.
1477 *** During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active,
1478 hidden blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' can
1479 be used in the mode line format to show the line at the beginning of
1482 *** User option `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' specifies a
1483 function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead of
1484 the normal block-hiding function.
1486 *** The command `hs-show-region' has been removed.
1488 *** The key bindings have changed to fit the Emacs conventions,
1489 roughly imitating those of Outline minor mode. Notably, the prefix
1490 for all bindings is now `C-c @'. For details, see the documentation
1491 for `hs-minor-mode'.
1493 *** The variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' has been removed, and
1494 hideshow.el now always behaves as if this variable were set to t.
1496 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
1498 *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes
1499 an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
1500 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
1502 **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the
1505 *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries
1508 *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log
1509 entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
1510 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
1511 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
1512 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be customized.
1513 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
1515 *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock highlighting.
1517 ** Changes to cmuscheme
1519 *** The user-option `scheme-program-name' has been renamed
1520 `cmuscheme-program-name' due to conflicts with xscheme.el.
1522 ** Changes in Font Lock
1524 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
1525 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major mode.
1527 *** Multi-line patterns are now supported. Modes using this, should
1528 set font-lock-multiline to t in their font-lock-defaults.
1530 *** `font-lock-syntactic-face-function' allows major-modes to choose
1531 the face used for each string/comment.
1533 *** A new standard face `font-lock-doc-face'.
1534 Meant for Lisp docstrings, Javadoc comments and other "documentation in code".
1536 ** Changes to Shell mode
1538 *** The `shell' command now accepts an optional argument to specify the buffer
1539 to use, which defaults to "*shell*". When used interactively, a
1540 non-default buffer may be specified by giving the `shell' command a
1541 prefix argument (causing it to prompt for the buffer name).
1543 ** Comint (subshell) changes
1545 These changes generally affect all modes derived from comint mode, which
1546 include shell-mode, gdb-mode, scheme-interaction-mode, etc.
1548 *** Comint now by default interprets some carriage-control characters.
1549 Comint now removes CRs from CR LF sequences, and treats single CRs and
1550 BSs in the output in a way similar to a terminal (by deleting to the
1551 beginning of the line, or deleting the previous character,
1552 respectively). This is achieved by adding `comint-carriage-motion' to
1553 the `comint-output-filter-functions' hook by default.
1555 *** By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp'
1556 to distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which
1557 parts of the text were output by the process, and which entered by the
1558 user, and attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use
1559 this information. Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line,
1560 respect field boundaries in a fairly natural manner. To disable this
1561 feature, and use the old behavior, customize the user option
1562 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields'.
1564 *** Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
1565 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
1567 *** The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
1568 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
1569 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
1571 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
1572 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
1573 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
1575 *** Packages based on comint now highlight user input and program prompts,
1576 and support choosing previous input with mouse-2. To control these features,
1577 see the user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
1579 *** The new command `comint-write-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-s')
1580 saves the output from the most recent command to a file. With a prefix
1581 argument, it appends to the file.
1583 *** The command `comint-kill-output' has been renamed `comint-delete-output'
1584 (usually bound to `C-c C-o'); the old name is aliased to it for
1587 *** The new function `comint-add-to-input-history' adds commands to the input
1590 *** The new variable `comint-input-history-ignore' is a regexp for
1591 identifying history lines that should be ignored, like tcsh time-stamp
1592 strings, starting with a `#'. The default value of this variable is "^#".
1594 ** Changes to Rmail mode
1596 *** The new user-option rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
1597 set to fine tune the identification of the correspondent when
1598 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
1599 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
1600 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
1603 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
1604 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
1605 regexp matching your mail addresses.
1607 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
1608 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
1609 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
1610 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
1611 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
1613 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
1616 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
1617 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
1620 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
1621 in which folder to put messages automatically.
1623 *** The new function `rmail-redecode-body' allows to fix a message
1624 with non-ASCII characters if Emacs happens to decode it incorrectly
1625 due to missing or malformed "charset=" header.
1627 ** The new user-option `mail-envelope-from' can be used to specify
1628 an envelope-from address different from user-mail-address.
1630 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
1631 use the -f option when sending mail.
1633 ** The Rmail command `o' (`rmail-output-to-rmail-file') now writes the
1634 current message in the internal `emacs-mule' encoding, rather than in
1635 the encoding taken from the variable `buffer-file-coding-system'.
1636 This allows to save messages whose characters cannot be safely encoded
1637 by the buffer's coding system, and makes sure the message will be
1638 displayed correctly when you later visit the target Rmail file.
1640 If you want your Rmail files be encoded in a specific coding system
1641 other than `emacs-mule', you can customize the variable
1642 `rmail-file-coding-system' to set its value to that coding system.
1644 ** Changes to TeX mode
1646 *** The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
1649 *** latex-mode now has a simple indentation algorithm.
1651 *** M-f and M-p jump around \begin...\end pairs.
1653 *** Added support for outline-minor-mode.
1655 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
1657 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
1658 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
1659 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
1660 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
1661 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
1662 can be edited from that buffer.
1664 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
1665 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
1666 `A' to use all marked entries).
1668 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
1669 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
1671 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
1672 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
1673 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
1676 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
1677 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
1678 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
1679 in column 1 are always made leaves.
1681 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
1682 has the following new features:
1684 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
1685 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
1686 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
1687 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
1689 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
1690 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
1691 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
1692 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
1693 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
1696 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
1701 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
1702 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
1703 spell-checks the current buffer.
1705 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
1708 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
1709 correction is made and re-checked.
1711 *** An Italian, Portuguese, and Slovak dictionary definition has been added.
1713 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
1716 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
1719 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
1722 *** Spell checking now works in the MS-DOS version of Emacs.
1724 ** Makefile mode changes
1726 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1728 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1729 Fontlock mode is active.
1733 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1734 so that searches can be resumed.
1736 *** In Isearch mode, C-M-s and C-M-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1737 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1738 that started the search.
1740 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1741 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1743 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1745 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1746 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1747 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1748 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1749 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1750 `secondary-selection'.
1752 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1753 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1754 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1755 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1756 usual snappy response.
1758 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1759 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1760 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1761 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1765 VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it
1766 easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp
1767 Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism
1768 to enable and disable support for particular version systems has
1769 changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable
1770 `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of symbols that identify
1771 version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file,
1772 each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the
1773 file is registered in that backend.
1775 When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed
1776 backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the
1777 directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for
1778 master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then
1779 the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen.
1780 As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete.
1782 The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC
1783 still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for
1784 RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables
1785 vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS
1786 where it doesn't make sense.)
1788 The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also
1789 obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude
1790 `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now.
1794 The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding
1795 checks are always done now.
1797 VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control
1800 `vc-diff' output is now displayed in `diff-mode'.
1801 `vc-print-log' uses `log-view-mode'.
1802 `vc-log-mode' (used for *VC-Log*) has been replaced by `log-edit-mode'.
1804 The command C-x v m (vc-merge) now accepts an empty argument as the
1805 first revision number. This means that any recent changes on the
1806 current branch should be picked up from the repository and merged into
1807 the working file (``merge news'').
1809 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
1810 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) now ask for a directory name from which to work
1813 *** Multiple Backends
1815 VC now lets you register files in more than one backend. This is
1816 useful, for example, if you are working with a slow remote CVS
1817 repository. You can then use RCS for local editing, and occasionally
1818 commit your changes back to CVS, or pick up changes from CVS into your
1821 To make this work, the ``more local'' backend (RCS in our example)
1822 should come first in `vc-handled-backends', and the ``more remote''
1823 backend (CVS) should come later. (The default value of
1824 `vc-handled-backends' already has it that way.)
1826 You can then commit changes to another backend (say, RCS), by typing
1827 C-u C-x v v RCS RET (i.e. vc-next-action now accepts a backend name as
1828 a revision number). VC registers the file in the more local backend
1829 if that hasn't already happened, and commits to a branch based on the
1830 current revision number from the more remote backend.
1832 If a file is registered in multiple backends, you can switch to
1833 another one using C-x v b (vc-switch-backend). This does not change
1834 any files, it only changes VC's perspective on the file. Use this to
1835 pick up changes from CVS while working under RCS locally.
1837 After you are done with your local RCS editing, you can commit your
1838 changes back to CVS using C-u C-x v v CVS RET. In this case, the
1839 local RCS archive is removed after the commit, and the log entry
1840 buffer is initialized to contain the entire RCS change log of the file.
1844 There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the
1845 default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in
1846 remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined
1847 by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a
1848 regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts
1849 that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC
1850 queries the repository just as often as it does for local files.
1852 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, then VC also makes local backups of
1853 repository versions. This means that ordinary diffs (C-x v =) and
1854 revert operations (C-x v u) can be done completely locally, without
1855 any repository interactions at all. The name of a local version
1856 backup of FILE is FILE.~REV.~, where REV is the repository version
1857 number. This format is similar to that used by C-x v ~
1858 (vc-version-other-window), except for the trailing dot. As a matter
1859 of fact, the two features can each use the files created by the other,
1860 the only difference being that files with a trailing `.' are deleted
1861 automatically after commit. (This feature doesn't work on MS-DOS,
1862 since DOS disallows more than a single dot in the trunk of a file
1865 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the
1866 repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit.
1867 If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to
1868 commit, you can either use C-x v m RET to perform an update on the
1869 current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an
1870 entire directory tree.
1872 The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call
1873 "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option
1874 is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are
1875 "watched" by other developers.)
1877 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
1878 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) are now also implemented for CVS. If you give
1879 an empty snapshot name to the latter, that performs a `cvs update',
1880 starting at the given directory.
1882 *** Lisp Changes in VC
1884 VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now
1885 add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a
1886 library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and
1887 then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for
1888 a version system named SYS, you write a library named vc-sys.el, which
1889 provides a number of functions vc-sys-... (see commentary at the top
1890 of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library,
1891 you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the symbol
1892 `SYS' to the list `vc-handled-backends'.
1894 ** The customizable EDT emulation package now supports the EDT
1895 SUBS command and EDT scroll margins. It also works with more
1896 terminal/keyboard configurations and it now works under XEmacs.
1897 See etc/edt-user.doc for more information.
1899 ** New modes and packages
1901 *** The new global minor mode `minibuffer-electric-default-mode'
1902 automatically hides the `(default ...)' part of minibuffer prompts when
1903 the default is not applicable.
1905 *** Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines,
1906 rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. The
1907 shapes are made up with the ascii characters |, -, / and \.
1911 - Intersecting: When a `|' intersects with a `-', a `+' is
1912 drawn, like this: | \ /
1916 - Rubber-banding: When drawing lines you can interactively see the
1917 result while holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse. If
1918 your machine is not fast enough (a 386 is a bit too slow, but a
1919 pentium is well enough), you can turn this feature off. You will
1920 then see 1's and 2's which mark the 1st and 2nd endpoint of the line
1923 - Arrows: After having drawn a (straight) line or a (straight)
1924 poly-line, you can set arrows on the line-ends by typing < or >.
1926 - Flood-filling: You can fill any area with a certain character by
1929 - Cut copy and paste: You can cut, copy and paste rectangular
1930 regions. Artist also interfaces with the rect package (this can be
1931 turned off if it causes you any trouble) so anything you cut in
1932 artist can be yanked with C-x r y and vice versa.
1934 - Drawing with keys: Everything you can do with the mouse, you can
1935 also do without the mouse.
1937 - Aspect-ratio: You can set the variable artist-aspect-ratio to
1938 reflect the height-width ratio for the font you are using. Squares
1939 and circles are then drawn square/round. Note, that once your
1940 ascii-file is shown with font with a different height-width ratio,
1941 the squares won't be square and the circles won't be round.
1943 - Drawing operations: The following drawing operations are implemented:
1945 lines straight-lines
1947 poly-lines straight poly-lines
1949 text (see-thru) text (overwrite)
1950 spray-can setting size for spraying
1951 vaporize line vaporize lines
1952 erase characters erase rectangles
1954 Straight lines are lines that go horizontally, vertically or
1955 diagonally. Plain lines go in any direction. The operations in
1956 the right column are accessed by holding down the shift key while
1959 It is possible to vaporize (erase) entire lines and connected lines
1960 (rectangles for example) as long as the lines being vaporized are
1961 straight and connected at their endpoints. Vaporizing is inspired
1962 by the drawrect package by Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>.
1964 - Picture mode compatibility: Artist is picture mode compatible (this
1967 *** The new package Eshell is an operating system command shell
1968 implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp. Use `M-x eshell' to invoke it.
1969 It functions similarly to bash and zsh, and allows running of Lisp
1970 functions and external commands using the same syntax. It supports
1971 history lists, aliases, extended globbing, smart scrolling, etc. It
1972 will work on any platform Emacs has been ported to. And since most of
1973 the basic commands -- ls, rm, mv, cp, ln, du, cat, etc. -- have been
1974 rewritten in Lisp, it offers an operating-system independent shell,
1975 all within the scope of your Emacs process.
1977 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1978 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1979 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1980 on certain projects.
1982 *** The new package hi-lock.el provides commands to highlight matches
1983 of interactively entered regexps. For example,
1985 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1987 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1988 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1989 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1990 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1991 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1992 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1993 corresponding file is read. There are commands to highlight matches
1994 to phrases and to highlight entire lines containing a match.
1996 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1999 *** The new package tildify.el allows to add hard spaces or other text
2000 fragments in accordance with the current major mode.
2002 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
2003 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
2005 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
2006 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
2007 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
2008 `comment-region' now doesn't always comment a-line-at-a-time, but only
2009 comments the region, breaking the line at point if necessary.
2011 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
2012 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
2013 separate Texinfo file.
2015 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
2016 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
2017 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
2018 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
2019 enter check-in log messages.
2021 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
2022 without invoking external programs.
2024 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
2025 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
2026 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
2027 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
2028 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
2030 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
2031 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
2033 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
2034 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
2036 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
2037 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
2038 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
2039 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
2040 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
2043 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
2044 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
2045 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
2046 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
2048 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
2049 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
2050 actually modifying content of a buffer.
2052 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
2055 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
2057 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
2059 ; comment (until end of line)
2063 $A default non-terminal
2064 $"C" default terminal
2065 $?C? default special
2066 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
2067 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
2068 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
2069 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
2070 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
2071 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
2072 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
2073 C+ one or more occurrences of C
2074 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
2075 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
2076 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
2077 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
2078 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
2079 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
2080 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
2082 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
2084 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
2085 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
2086 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
2087 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
2088 equal signs of assignments.
2090 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
2091 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
2093 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
2094 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
2095 buffer menu with this package. See the Custom group `bs'.
2097 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
2099 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
2100 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
2101 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
2102 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
2103 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
2104 which answers different needs.
2106 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
2107 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
2108 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
2109 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
2110 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
2113 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
2114 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
2116 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
2118 *** hl-line.el provides `hl-line-mode', a minor mode to highlight the
2119 current line in the current buffer. It also provides
2120 `global-hl-line-mode' to provide the same behaviour in all buffers.
2122 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
2124 Please note: if `ansi-color-for-comint-mode' and
2125 `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will
2126 disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to
2127 `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This
2128 displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground
2129 and background colors.
2131 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
2134 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
2137 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
2139 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
2141 *** whitespace.el is a package for warning about and cleaning bogus
2142 whitespace in a file.
2144 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
2145 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
2146 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
2147 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
2148 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
2149 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
2150 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
2152 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
2154 Here is an example of columns:
2157 dog pineapple car EXTRA
2158 porcupine strawberry airplane
2160 Doing the following settings:
2162 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
2163 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
2164 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
2165 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
2168 Selecting the lines above and typing:
2170 M-x delimit-columns-region
2174 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
2175 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
2176 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
2178 delim-col has the following options:
2180 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
2183 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
2184 between each column.
2186 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
2189 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
2192 delim-col has the following commands:
2194 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
2195 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
2197 *** Recentf mode maintains a menu for visiting files that were
2198 operated on recently. User option recentf-menu-filter specifies a
2199 menu filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the
2200 recent file list can be displayed:
2202 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
2203 - sorted by file paths, file names, ascending or descending.
2204 - showing paths relative to the current default-directory
2206 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
2207 dynamically change the menu appearance.
2209 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
2212 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
2213 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
2214 specific to Message mode.
2216 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
2217 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
2218 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
2220 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
2221 interface to access directory servers using different directory
2222 protocols. It has a separate manual.
2224 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
2225 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
2227 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
2229 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
2230 minibuffer with completion.
2232 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
2233 with the diary features.
2235 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
2236 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
2238 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
2241 *** pcomplete.el is a library that provides programmable completion
2242 facilities for Emacs, similar to what zsh and tcsh offer. The main
2243 difference is that completion functions are written in Lisp, meaning
2244 they can be profiled, debugged, etc.
2246 *** antlr-mode is a new major mode for editing ANTLR grammar files.
2247 It is automatically turned on for files whose names have the extension
2250 ** Changes in sort.el
2252 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
2253 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
2254 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
2257 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
2259 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
2260 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
2261 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
2263 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
2264 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
2266 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
2267 output ^M at the end of lines.
2269 ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor
2270 mode `iswitchb-mode'.
2272 ** Just loading the msb package doesn't switch on Msb mode anymore.
2273 If you have `(require 'msb)' in your .emacs, please replace it with
2276 ** Flyspell mode has various new options. See the `flyspell' Custom
2279 ** The user option `backward-delete-char-untabify-method' controls the
2280 behavior of `backward-delete-char-untabify'. The following values
2283 `untabify' -- turn a tab to many spaces, then delete one space;
2284 `hungry' -- delete all whitespace, both tabs and spaces;
2285 `all' -- delete all whitespace, including tabs, spaces and newlines;
2286 nil -- just delete one character.
2288 Default value is `untabify'.
2290 [This change was made in Emacs 20.3 but not mentioned then.]
2292 ** In Cperl mode `cperl-invalid-face' should now be a normal face
2293 symbol, not double-quoted.
2295 ** Some packages are declared obsolete, to be removed in a future
2296 version. They are: auto-show, c-mode, hilit19, hscroll, ooutline,
2297 profile, rnews, rnewspost, and sc. Their implementations have been
2298 moved to lisp/obsolete.
2300 ** auto-compression mode is no longer enabled just by loading jka-compr.el.
2301 To control it, set `auto-compression-mode' via Custom or use the
2302 `auto-compression-mode' command.
2304 ** `browse-url-gnome-moz' is a new option for
2305 `browse-url-browser-function', invoking Mozilla in GNOME, and
2306 `browse-url-kde' can be chosen for invoking the KDE browser.
2308 ** The user-option `browse-url-new-window-p' has been renamed to
2309 `browse-url-new-window-flag'.
2311 ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now
2312 operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode.
2314 ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It
2315 is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia.
2317 ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM
2318 support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode,
2319 use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the
2320 buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands
2321 M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a
2322 new command M-x strokes-list-strokes.
2324 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
2325 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
2327 ** Hexl mode allows to insert non-ASCII characters.
2329 The non-ASCII characters are encoded using the same encoding as the
2330 file you are visiting in Hexl mode.
2332 ** Shell script mode changes.
2334 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
2335 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizable, and
2336 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
2340 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
2342 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
2343 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
2344 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
2345 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
2346 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
2348 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
2349 declarations when given the --declarations option.
2351 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
2352 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
2354 *** You shouldn't generally need any more the -C or -c++ option: etags
2355 automatically switches to C++ parsing when it meets the `class' or
2356 `template' keywords.
2358 *** Etags now is able to delve at arbitrary deeps into nested structures in
2359 C-like languages. Previously, it was limited to one or two brace levels.
2361 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
2364 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
2366 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
2368 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
2371 *** In makefiles, tags the targets.
2373 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
2374 variables are tagged.
2376 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
2378 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
2381 ** Changes in etags.el
2383 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
2384 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
2385 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
2387 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
2388 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
2390 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
2391 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
2392 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
2393 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
2395 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
2397 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
2398 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
2400 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
2402 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
2403 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
2404 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
2406 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
2407 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
2409 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
2410 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
2412 *** You can now search for tags that are part of the filename itself.
2413 If you have tagged the files topfile.c subdir/subfile.c
2414 /tmp/tempfile.c, you can now search for tags "topfile.c", "subfile.c",
2415 "dir/sub", "tempfile", "tempfile.c". If the tag matches the file name,
2416 point will go to the beginning of the file.
2418 *** Compressed files are now transparently supported if
2419 auto-compression-mode is active. You can tag (with Etags) and search
2420 (with find-tag) both compressed and uncompressed files.
2422 *** Tags commands like M-x tags-search no longer change point
2423 in buffers where no match is found. In buffers where a match is
2424 found, the original value of point is pushed on the marker ring.
2426 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
2427 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
2428 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
2430 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
2432 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
2434 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps'
2435 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
2436 expression from that list, are not checked.
2438 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
2439 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
2440 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
2441 the buffer, just like for the local files.
2443 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
2445 ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now
2446 displays local abbrevs, only.
2448 ** Refill minor mode provides preliminary support for keeping
2449 paragraphs filled as you modify them.
2451 ** The variable `double-click-fuzz' specifies how much the mouse
2452 may be moved between clicks that are recognized as a pair. Its value
2453 is measured in pixels.
2455 ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files
2456 to be visited as images.
2458 ** Two new user-options `grep-command' and `grep-find-command'
2459 were added to compile.el.
2461 ** Withdrawn packages
2463 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
2464 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
2466 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
2468 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
2471 * Incompatible Lisp changes
2473 There are a few Lisp changes which are not backwards-compatible and
2474 may require changes to existing code. Here is a list for reference.
2475 See the sections below for details.
2477 ** Since `format' preserves text properties, the idiom
2478 `(format "%s" foo)' no longer works to copy and remove properties.
2479 Use `copy-sequence' to copy the string, then use `set-text-properties'
2480 to remove the properties of the copy.
2482 ** Since the `keymap' text property now has significance, some code
2483 which uses both `local-map' and `keymap' properties (for portability)
2484 may, for instance, give rise to duplicate menus when the keymaps from
2485 these properties are active.
2487 ** The change in the treatment of non-ASCII characters in search
2488 ranges may affect some code.
2490 ** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook
2491 buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might
2492 make a difference to some code.
2494 ** The new treatment of the minibuffer prompt might affect code which
2495 operates on the minibuffer.
2497 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
2498 cause `no-conversion' and `emacs-mule-unix' coding systems to produce
2499 different results when reading files with non-ASCII characters
2500 (previously, both coding systems would produce the same results).
2501 Specifically, `no-conversion' interprets each 8-bit byte as a separate
2502 character. This makes `no-conversion' inappropriate for reading
2503 multibyte text, e.g. buffers written to disk in their internal MULE
2504 encoding (auto-saving does that, for example). If a Lisp program
2505 reads such files with `no-conversion', each byte of the multibyte
2506 sequence, including the MULE leading codes such as \201, is treated as
2507 a separate character, which prevents them from being interpreted in
2508 the buffer as multibyte characters.
2510 Therefore, Lisp programs that read files which contain the internal
2511 MULE encoding should use `emacs-mule-unix'. `no-conversion' is only
2512 appropriate for reading truly binary files.
2514 ** Code that relies on the obsolete `before-change-function' and
2515 `after-change-function' to detect buffer changes will now fail. Use
2516 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead.
2518 ** Code that uses `concat' with integer args now gets an error, as
2521 ** The function base64-decode-string now always returns a unibyte
2524 ** Not a Lisp incompatibility as such but, with the introduction of
2525 extra private charsets, there is now only one slot free for a new
2526 dimension-2 private charset. User code which tries to add more than
2527 one extra will fail unless you rebuild Emacs with some standard
2528 charset(s) removed; that is probably inadvisable because it changes
2529 the emacs-mule encoding. Also, files stored in the emacs-mule
2530 encoding using Emacs 20 with additional private charsets defined will
2531 probably not be read correctly by Emacs 21.
2533 ** The variable `directory-sep-char' is slated for removal.
2534 Not really a change (yet), but a projected one that you should be
2535 aware of: The variable `directory-sep-char' is deprecated, and should
2536 not be used. It was always ignored on GNU/Linux and Unix systems and
2537 on MS-DOS, but the MS-Windows port tried to support it by adapting the
2538 behavior of certain primitives to the value of this variable. It
2539 turned out that such support cannot be reliable, so it was decided to
2540 remove this variable in the near future. Lisp programs are well
2541 advised not to set it to anything but '/', because any different value
2542 will not have any effect when support for this variable is removed.
2545 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
2546 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
2548 ** Function assq-delete-all replaces function assoc-delete-all.
2550 ** The new function amimate-string, from lisp/play/animate.el
2551 allows the animated display of strings.
2553 ** The new function `interactive-form' can be used to obtain the
2554 interactive form of a function.
2556 ** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
2557 between custom options. Example:
2559 (defcustom default-input-method nil
2560 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
2561 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
2562 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
2564 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
2565 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
2567 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
2568 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
2569 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
2571 ** The new hook `kbd-macro-termination-hook' is run at the end of
2572 function execute-kbd-macro. Functions on this hook are called with no
2573 args. The hook is run independent of how the macro was terminated
2574 (signal or normal termination).
2576 ** Functions `butlast' and `nbutlast' for removing trailing elements
2577 from a list are now available without requiring the CL package.
2579 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
2580 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
2582 ** The user-option `face-font-registry-alternatives' specifies
2583 alternative font registry names to try when looking for a font.
2585 ** Function `md5' calculates the MD5 "message digest"/"checksum".
2587 ** Function `delete-frame' runs `delete-frame-hook' before actually
2588 deleting the frame. The hook is called with one arg, the frame
2591 ** `add-hook' now makes the hook local if called with a non-nil LOCAL arg.
2593 ** The treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges has changed.
2594 If a range in a regular expression or the arg of
2595 skip-chars-forward/backward starts with a unibyte character C and ends
2596 with a multibyte character C2, the range is divided into two: one is
2597 C..?\377, the other is C1..C2, where C1 is the first character of C2's
2600 ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in
2601 the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the
2604 ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an
2605 expression with auto-compression-mode enabled.
2607 ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced
2608 with the more general `:mask' property.
2610 ** Image specifications accept more `:conversion's.
2612 ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a
2615 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
2616 is running in batch mode. For example,
2618 (message "%s" (read t))
2620 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
2623 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
2624 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
2626 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
2627 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
2630 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
2633 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
2635 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurrences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
2636 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
2638 - Function: remq ELT LIST
2640 Return a copy of LIST with all occurrences of ELT removed. The
2641 comparison is done with `eq'.
2643 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
2645 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
2646 has been changed: WEAK can now have new values `key-or-value' and
2647 `key-and-value', in addition the `nil', `key', `value', and `t'.
2649 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
2650 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
2651 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
2653 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
2654 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
2656 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
2657 function was declared obsolete.
2659 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
2660 retained as an alias).
2662 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
2663 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
2664 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
2666 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
2668 - Function: window-list &optional FRAME WINDOW MINIBUF
2670 Return a list of windows on FRAME, starting with WINDOW. FRAME nil or
2671 omitted means use the selected frame. WINDOW nil or omitted means use
2672 the selected window. MINIBUF t means include the minibuffer window,
2673 even if it isn't active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means include the
2674 minibuffer window only if it's active. MINIBUF neither nil nor t
2675 means never include the minibuffer window.
2677 ** There's a new function `get-window-with-predicate' defined as follows
2679 - Function: get-window-with-predicate PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
2681 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
2683 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
2684 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
2685 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
2686 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
2689 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
2690 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
2691 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
2692 minibuffer even if it is active.
2694 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
2695 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
2696 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
2697 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
2698 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
2699 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
2701 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
2702 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
2703 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
2704 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
2705 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
2706 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
2707 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
2709 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
2710 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
2711 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
2713 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
2714 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
2715 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
2716 Default value is nil.
2718 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
2721 ** The new user option `line-number-display-limit-width' controls
2722 the maximum width of lines in a buffer for which Emacs displays line
2723 numbers in the mode line. The default is 200.
2725 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
2726 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
2727 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
2729 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information about the argument
2730 list of a primitive.
2732 ** `where-is-internal' now also accepts a list of keymaps.
2734 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
2735 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
2736 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
2737 than replacing the local map.
2739 ** The obsolete variables `before-change-function' and
2740 `after-change-function' are no longer acted upon and have been
2741 removed. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions'
2744 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
2746 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments,
2747 as promised long ago.
2749 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
2751 ** The new variable auto-coding-regexp-alist specifies coding systems
2752 for reading specific files, analogous to auto-coding-alist, but
2753 patterns are checked against file contents instead of file names.
2756 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
2758 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2759 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2760 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2761 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2763 ** The new package rx.el provides an alternative sexp notation for
2764 regular expressions.
2766 - Function: rx-to-string SEXP
2768 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
2772 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
2774 The following are valid subforms of regular expressions in sexp
2778 matches string STRING literally.
2781 matches character CHAR literally.
2784 matches any character except a newline.
2787 matches any character
2790 matches any character in SET. SET may be a character or string.
2791 Ranges of characters can be specified as `A-Z' in strings.
2797 matches any character not in SET
2800 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a line
2801 in the text being matched
2804 is similar to `line-start' but matches only at the end of a line
2807 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
2808 string being matched against.
2811 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
2812 string being matched against.
2815 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
2816 buffer being matched against.
2819 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
2820 buffer being matched against.
2823 matches the empty string, but only at point.
2826 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
2830 matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word.
2833 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
2836 `(not word-boundary)'
2837 matches the empty string, but not at the beginning or end of a
2841 matches 0 through 9.
2844 matches ASCII control characters.
2847 matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
2850 matches space and tab only.
2853 matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
2857 matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
2861 matches letters and digits. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2862 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2865 matches letters. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2866 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2869 matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
2872 matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
2875 matches anything lower-case.
2878 matches anything upper-case.
2881 matches punctuation. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2882 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
2885 matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
2888 matches anything that has word syntax.
2891 matches a character with syntax SYNTAX. SYNTAX must be one
2892 of the following symbols.
2894 `whitespace' (\\s- in string notation)
2895 `punctuation' (\\s.)
2898 `open-parenthesis' (\\s()
2899 `close-parenthesis' (\\s))
2900 `expression-prefix' (\\s')
2901 `string-quote' (\\s\")
2902 `paired-delimiter' (\\s$)
2904 `character-quote' (\\s/)
2905 `comment-start' (\\s<)
2906 `comment-end' (\\s>)
2908 `(not (syntax SYNTAX))'
2909 matches a character that has not syntax SYNTAX.
2911 `(category CATEGORY)'
2912 matches a character with category CATEGORY. CATEGORY must be
2913 either a character to use for C, or one of the following symbols.
2915 `consonant' (\\c0 in string notation)
2917 `upper-diacritical-mark' (\\c2)
2918 `lower-diacritical-mark' (\\c3)
2922 `vowel-modifying-diacritical-mark' (\\c7)
2924 `semivowel-lower' (\\c9)
2925 `not-at-end-of-line' (\\c<)
2926 `not-at-beginning-of-line' (\\c>)
2927 `alpha-numeric-two-byte' (\\cA)
2928 `chinse-two-byte' (\\cC)
2929 `greek-two-byte' (\\cG)
2930 `japanese-hiragana-two-byte' (\\cH)
2931 `indian-tow-byte' (\\cI)
2932 `japanese-katakana-two-byte' (\\cK)
2933 `korean-hangul-two-byte' (\\cN)
2934 `cyrillic-two-byte' (\\cY)
2943 `japanese-katakana' (\\ck)
2947 `japanese-roman' (\\cr)
2954 `(not (category CATEGORY))'
2955 matches a character that has not category CATEGORY.
2957 `(and SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
2958 matches what SEXP1 matches, followed by what SEXP2 matches, etc.
2960 `(submatch SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
2961 like `and', but makes the match accessible with `match-end',
2962 `match-beginning', and `match-string'.
2964 `(group SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
2965 another name for `submatch'.
2967 `(or SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
2968 matches anything that matches SEXP1 or SEXP2, etc. If all
2969 args are strings, use `regexp-opt' to optimize the resulting
2972 `(minimal-match SEXP)'
2973 produce a non-greedy regexp for SEXP. Normally, regexps matching
2974 zero or more occurrances of something are \"greedy\" in that they
2975 match as much as they can, as long as the overall regexp can
2976 still match. A non-greedy regexp matches as little as possible.
2978 `(maximal-match SEXP)'
2979 produce a greedy regexp for SEXP. This is the default.
2981 `(zero-or-more SEXP)'
2982 matches zero or more occurrences of what SEXP matches.
2985 like `zero-or-more'.
2988 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
2991 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
2993 `(one-or-more SEXP)'
2994 matches one or more occurrences of A.
3000 like `one-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
3003 like `one-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
3005 `(zero-or-one SEXP)'
3006 matches zero or one occurrences of A.
3012 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a greedy regexp.
3015 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
3018 matches N occurrences of what SEXP matches.
3021 matches N to M occurrences of what SEXP matches.
3024 evaluate FORM and insert result. If result is a string,
3028 include REGEXP in string notation in the result.
3030 *** The features `md5' and `overlay' are now provided by default.
3032 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
3033 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
3034 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
3035 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
3037 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
3038 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
3039 when they find 8-bit characters. Previously, they included `ascii' in a
3040 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
3042 *** The functions `set-buffer-multibyte', `string-as-multibyte' and
3043 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer or a string
3044 if it contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
3046 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
3047 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
3048 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
3049 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
3050 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
3051 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
3052 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
3055 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
3057 A fontset can now be specified for each independent character, for
3058 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
3059 character set as previously.
3061 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
3062 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
3063 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
3065 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
3066 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
3067 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
3068 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
3070 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
3071 name of a font and REGISTRY is a registry name of a font.
3073 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
3074 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
3077 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
3078 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
3080 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
3081 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
3082 buffers and strings.
3084 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
3085 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
3086 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
3087 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
3088 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
3089 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
3090 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
3093 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
3094 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
3095 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
3097 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
3098 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
3099 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
3100 may differ between buffer and string text.
3102 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
3103 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
3105 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
3106 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
3107 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
3108 `composition' from STRING.
3110 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
3111 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
3113 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
3116 ** The new coding system `mac-roman' is primarily intended for use on
3117 the Macintosh but may be used generally for Macintosh-encoded text.
3119 ** The new character sets `mule-unicode-0100-24ff',
3120 `mule-unicode-2500-33ff', and `mule-unicode-e000-ffff' have been
3121 introduced for Unicode characters in the range U+0100..U+24FF,
3122 U+2500..U+33FF, U+E000..U+FFFF respectively.
3124 Note that the character sets are not yet unified in Emacs, so
3125 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
3126 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
3127 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
3128 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
3129 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system.
3131 ** The new coding system `mule-utf-8' has been added.
3132 It provides limited support for decoding/encoding UTF-8 text. For
3133 details, please see the documentation string of this coding system.
3135 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
3136 `japanese-jisx0213-2' have been introduced for the new Japanese
3137 standard JIS X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
3139 ** The new character sets `latin-iso8859-14' and `latin-iso8859-15'
3140 have been introduced.
3142 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
3143 have been introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
3144 0xA0..0xFF respectively. Note that the multibyte representation of
3145 eight-bit-control is never exposed; this leads to an exception in the
3146 emacs-mule coding system, which encodes everything else to the
3147 buffer/string internal representation. Note that to search for
3148 eight-bit-graphic characters in a multibyte buffer, the search string
3149 must be multibyte, otherwise such characters will be converted to
3150 their multibyte equivalent.
3152 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
3153 that offset in the file before writing.
3155 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
3156 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
3158 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
3159 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
3160 from which the command was issued.
3162 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
3163 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
3164 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
3165 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
3168 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
3169 to `window-buffer-height'.
3171 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
3173 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
3174 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
3175 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
3177 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
3180 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optional third argument
3181 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
3183 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
3184 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
3185 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
3187 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
3188 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
3189 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
3190 is currently displayed in some window.
3192 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
3193 argument function's results.
3195 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
3196 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails. Also,
3197 `base64-decode-string' now always returns a unibyte string (in Emacs
3198 20, it returned a multibyte string when the result was a valid multibyte
3201 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
3202 header in the list of headers passed to it.
3204 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
3205 ignores differences in case and text representation.
3207 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
3208 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
3211 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
3212 nil don't display a cursor
3213 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
3214 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
3215 others display a box cursor.
3217 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
3218 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
3219 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
3220 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
3222 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
3223 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
3224 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
3225 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
3229 (string-to-syntax "()")
3232 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
3235 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
3236 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
3243 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
3248 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
3253 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
3260 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
3261 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
3264 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
3265 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
3266 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
3267 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
3269 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
3271 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
3272 for a regexp in a string.
3274 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
3275 `mouse-position-function'.
3277 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
3278 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
3280 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
3281 Keywords are now always considered constants.
3283 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
3286 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
3287 returned by function `recent-keys'.
3289 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
3290 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
3291 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding C-M-a
3292 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
3295 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
3296 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
3298 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
3299 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
3300 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
3301 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
3304 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
3305 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
3306 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
3307 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
3309 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
3310 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
3311 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
3313 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
3314 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
3317 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
3319 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
3320 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
3321 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
3324 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
3325 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
3326 Also back-references like \2 are now considered as an error if the
3327 corresponding subgroup does not exist (or is not closed yet).
3328 Previously it would have been silently turned into `2' (ignoring the `\').
3330 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
3331 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
3333 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
3334 instead of being optional.
3336 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
3337 modify read-only text.
3339 ** New functions and variables for locales.
3341 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
3342 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
3343 time functions like strftime. The new variables
3344 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
3345 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
3347 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
3348 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
3349 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
3350 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
3351 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
3352 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
3353 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
3355 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
3356 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
3357 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
3360 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
3361 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
3363 ** New function `propertize'
3365 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
3366 strings with text properties.
3368 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
3370 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
3371 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
3372 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
3373 specified value of that property. Example:
3375 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
3377 ** push and pop macros.
3379 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
3380 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
3381 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
3383 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
3384 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
3385 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
3387 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
3389 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
3390 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
3392 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
3393 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
3394 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
3395 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
3397 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
3398 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
3399 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
3400 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
3402 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such as
3403 [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on. These must be used within a character
3404 class--for instance, [-[:digit:].+] matches digits or a period
3407 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
3408 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
3409 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
3410 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
3411 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
3413 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
3415 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
3416 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3417 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
3418 [:alpha:] matches letters.
3419 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3420 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
3421 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
3422 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
3423 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
3424 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
3425 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3426 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
3427 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
3428 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
3429 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
3431 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
3433 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
3435 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
3437 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
3438 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
3442 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
3443 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
3444 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
3448 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
3449 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
3451 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
3453 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
3454 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
3455 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
3456 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
3457 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
3459 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
3461 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
3462 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
3463 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
3467 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
3468 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
3469 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
3470 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
3471 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
3473 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
3475 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
3477 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
3479 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
3481 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
3483 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
3486 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
3488 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
3490 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
3492 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
3494 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
3496 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
3498 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
3500 Returns the size of TABLE.
3502 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
3504 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
3506 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
3508 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
3510 - Function: clrhash TABLE
3514 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
3516 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
3519 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
3521 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
3522 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
3524 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
3526 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
3528 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
3530 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
3531 arguments KEY and VALUE.
3533 - Function: sxhash OBJ
3535 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
3537 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
3539 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
3540 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
3541 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
3542 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
3543 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
3545 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
3547 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
3548 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
3549 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
3551 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
3552 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
3554 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
3555 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
3557 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
3558 (sxhash (upcase a)))
3560 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
3561 'case-fold-string-hash))
3563 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
3565 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
3567 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
3568 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
3569 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
3571 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
3573 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
3574 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
3576 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
3577 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
3578 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
3579 is too short to reach that column.
3581 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
3582 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
3583 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
3584 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
3586 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
3587 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
3588 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
3590 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
3591 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
3593 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
3594 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
3596 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
3597 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
3598 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
3599 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
3600 temporary-file-directory instead.
3602 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
3603 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
3604 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
3605 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
3607 ** assq-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
3608 elements of an alist which have a car `eq' to a particular value.
3610 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
3612 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
3613 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
3614 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
3616 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
3618 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
3619 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
3620 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
3621 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
3622 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
3623 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
3625 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
3626 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
3627 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
3628 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
3630 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
3632 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
3633 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
3634 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
3637 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
3638 string where arguments appear in the result string.
3642 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
3644 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
3645 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
3648 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
3650 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
3652 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
3653 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
3656 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
3658 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
3659 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
3664 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
3665 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
3667 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
3668 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
3669 to enable sound support.
3671 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
3672 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
3673 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
3674 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
3675 sound to play, before playing the sound.
3677 The following sound properties are supported:
3681 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
3682 searched relative to `data-directory'.
3686 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
3687 may be present, but not both.
3691 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
3692 0..1. This property is optional.
3696 DEVICE is a string specifying the system device on which to play the
3697 sound. The default device is system-dependent.
3699 Other properties are ignored.
3701 An alternative interface is called as
3702 (play-sound-file FILE &optional VOLUME DEVICE).
3704 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
3706 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
3709 ** Changes to garbage collection
3711 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
3712 of live and free strings.
3714 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
3715 strings that have been consed so far.
3718 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
3721 ** The user-option `resize-mini-windows' controls how Emacs resizes
3724 ** The function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now has a third optional
3725 argument, PARTIALLY. If a character is only partially visible, nil is
3726 returned, unless PARTIALLY is non-nil.
3728 ** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used.
3730 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
3732 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
3735 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
3737 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
3739 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
3740 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
3741 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
3742 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
3743 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
3745 ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image
3748 - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME
3750 Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap.
3751 FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil
3752 or omitted means use the selected frame.
3754 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
3755 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
3757 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
3760 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see
3764 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
3766 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
3767 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
3768 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
3769 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
3771 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
3772 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
3774 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
3775 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
3776 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
3777 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
3778 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
3779 just display it black instead.
3781 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
3784 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
3788 ** New face implementation.
3790 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
3791 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
3795 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
3797 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
3799 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
3800 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
3802 3. Font height in 1/10pt
3804 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
3806 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
3808 6. Foreground color.
3810 7. Background color.
3812 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
3814 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
3816 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
3818 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
3820 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
3823 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
3824 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
3826 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
3827 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
3828 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
3829 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
3830 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each of the face
3831 attributes mentioned above.
3833 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
3834 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
3837 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
3838 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
3843 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
3844 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
3845 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
3846 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
3847 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
3848 results in a fully-specified face.
3850 *** Face realization.
3852 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
3853 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
3854 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
3855 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
3856 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
3857 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
3859 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
3860 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
3861 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
3862 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
3864 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
3865 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
3866 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
3867 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
3868 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
3870 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
3871 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
3872 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
3873 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
3874 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
3877 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
3878 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
3879 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
3880 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
3882 **** Clearing face caches.
3884 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
3885 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
3890 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
3891 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
3892 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
3894 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
3895 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
3896 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
3897 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
3898 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
3900 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
3901 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
3902 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
3904 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
3906 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
3907 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
3908 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
3909 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
3910 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
3911 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
3912 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
3914 Setting `face-font-family-alternatives' allows the user to specify
3915 alternative font families to try if a family specified by a face
3918 Setting `face-font-registry-alternatives' allows the user to specify
3919 all alternative font registry names to try for a face specifying a
3922 Please note that the interpretations of the above two variables are
3925 Setting face-ignored-fonts allows the user to ignore specific fonts.
3930 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
3931 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
3934 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
3935 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
3936 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
3937 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
3938 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
3941 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
3943 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
3945 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
3947 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
3949 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
3950 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
3951 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
3953 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
3954 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
3955 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
3956 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
3957 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
3958 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
3959 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
3960 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
3961 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
3962 of the face font sort order.
3964 - Function: x-font-family-list
3966 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
3967 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
3968 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
3969 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
3971 - Variable: font-list-limit
3973 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
3974 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
3975 matching font. The default is currently 100.
3977 *** Setting face attributes.
3979 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
3980 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
3981 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
3984 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
3985 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
3987 The following attributes are recognized:
3991 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
3992 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
3993 and `?' are allowed.
3997 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
3998 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
3999 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
4000 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
4004 VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use
4005 in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to
4006 scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old
4007 height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height.
4011 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
4012 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
4013 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
4017 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
4018 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
4021 `:foreground', `:background'
4023 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
4027 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
4028 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
4029 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
4034 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
4035 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
4036 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
4041 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
4042 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
4043 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
4044 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
4048 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
4049 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
4050 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
4051 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
4052 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
4053 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
4054 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
4055 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
4056 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
4057 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
4058 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
4059 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
4060 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
4061 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
4062 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
4063 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
4068 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
4069 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
4073 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
4074 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
4075 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
4076 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
4077 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
4078 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
4080 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
4081 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
4085 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
4086 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
4087 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
4090 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
4091 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
4092 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
4094 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
4099 VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list
4100 of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face
4101 like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces.
4103 *** Face attributes and X resources
4105 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
4108 Face attribute X resource class
4109 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
4110 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
4111 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
4112 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
4113 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
4114 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
4115 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
4116 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
4117 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
4118 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
4119 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
4120 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
4121 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
4122 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
4123 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
4124 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
4125 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
4126 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
4127 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
4128 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
4130 *** Text property `face'.
4132 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
4133 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
4134 specification can be
4136 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
4138 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
4139 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
4140 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
4141 for face attribute names.
4143 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
4144 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
4145 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
4147 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
4149 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
4150 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
4151 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
4152 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
4153 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
4154 used to clear the mapping table.
4156 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
4158 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
4159 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
4160 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
4161 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
4162 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
4163 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
4164 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
4165 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
4166 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
4167 modify their color-related behavior.
4169 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
4172 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
4174 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
4175 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
4176 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
4177 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
4178 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
4179 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
4180 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
4181 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
4182 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
4184 The new function `display-images-p' returns non-nil if a particular
4185 display can display image files.
4187 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
4189 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
4190 To disallow this completely (like previous versions of emacs), customize
4191 the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', and turn on the
4192 `Inviolable' option.
4194 The function minibuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
4195 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
4196 Otherwise, it returns zero.
4198 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
4200 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
4201 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
4202 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
4204 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
4205 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
4206 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
4207 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
4208 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
4209 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
4210 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
4213 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
4214 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
4215 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
4217 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
4219 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
4221 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
4223 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4224 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
4225 constrained position if that is different.
4227 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
4228 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
4229 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
4230 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
4231 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
4232 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
4233 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
4234 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
4235 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
4237 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
4238 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
4239 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
4240 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
4241 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
4243 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
4244 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
4246 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
4248 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
4250 Delete the field surrounding POS.
4251 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4252 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4254 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
4256 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
4257 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4258 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4259 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
4260 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
4262 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
4264 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
4265 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4266 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4267 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
4268 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
4270 - Function: field-string &optional POS
4272 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
4273 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4274 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4276 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
4278 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
4279 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4280 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4284 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
4285 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
4286 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
4287 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
4289 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
4290 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
4291 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
4292 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
4295 IMAGE is an image specification.
4297 *** Image specifications
4299 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
4300 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
4301 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
4302 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
4303 described below are ignored.
4305 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
4309 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
4310 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
4311 to use for its ascent.
4313 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
4314 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
4316 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
4317 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
4318 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
4319 overlays that apply to the image.
4323 MARGIN must be either a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put
4324 as margin around the image, or a pair (X . Y) with X specifying the
4325 horizontal margin and Y specifying the vertical margin. Default is 0.
4329 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
4334 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it.
4336 ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss''
4337 edge-detection algorithm to the image.
4339 ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means
4340 apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a
4341 nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at
4342 position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels
4343 around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the
4344 neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the
4345 transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at
4346 x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown
4349 (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1
4351 x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1)
4353 The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color
4354 resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels,
4355 multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum
4356 of the factors' absolute values.
4358 Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of
4364 Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of
4370 ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks
4375 If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for
4376 the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the
4377 image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the
4378 background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the
4379 image, assuming the most frequently occurring color from the corners is
4380 the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED
4381 GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the
4384 If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images
4385 in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying
4390 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
4391 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
4392 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
4393 may be present in the image specification.
4397 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
4398 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
4399 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
4400 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
4402 *** Supported image types
4404 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
4406 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
4407 properties supported are
4411 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4412 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground.
4416 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4417 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
4419 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
4420 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
4421 instead of a `:file' property.
4425 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
4429 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
4435 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
4436 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
4438 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
4440 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
4443 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
4444 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
4447 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
4449 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
4450 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
4451 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
4452 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
4454 Additional image properties supported are:
4456 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
4458 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
4459 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
4462 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
4463 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
4465 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
4466 to display compressed images.
4468 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
4470 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
4471 mono images are supported. Additional image properties supported for
4476 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4477 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground.
4481 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4482 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
4484 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
4486 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
4487 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
4490 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
4492 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
4493 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
4496 **** GIF, image type `gif'
4498 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
4499 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
4501 Additional image properties supported are:
4505 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
4506 multi-image GIF file. An error is signaled if INDEX is too large.
4508 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
4509 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
4510 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
4513 (defun show-anim (file max)
4514 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
4515 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
4517 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
4520 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
4523 (goto-char (point-min))
4524 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
4525 (insert-image img "x"))
4526 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
4528 **** PNG, image type `png'
4530 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
4531 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
4534 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
4536 Additional image properties supported are:
4540 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
4541 integer. This is a required property.
4545 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
4546 must be a integer. This is an required property.
4550 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
4551 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
4552 files. This is an required property.
4554 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
4559 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
4560 which are supported in the current configuration.
4562 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
4563 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
4564 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
4565 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
4566 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
4568 *** Simplified image API, image.el
4570 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
4571 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
4572 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
4573 define an image based on available image types. The functions
4574 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
4579 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
4582 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
4583 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
4584 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
4585 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
4586 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
4587 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
4588 of the display margins.
4590 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
4591 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
4592 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
4593 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
4598 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
4599 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
4600 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
4601 that have a `help-echo' property.
4603 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
4604 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
4605 the window in which the help was found.
4607 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
4608 `help-echo' text property was found.
4610 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
4611 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
4613 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
4614 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
4617 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
4618 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
4620 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
4621 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
4622 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
4623 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
4624 used as help string.
4626 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
4627 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
4628 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
4630 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
4632 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
4633 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
4635 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
4636 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
4637 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
4638 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
4641 (global-set-key [A-down]
4644 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4645 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
4646 (global-set-key [A-up]
4649 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4650 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
4652 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
4654 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
4655 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
4656 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
4657 is called with one argument, POS.
4659 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
4660 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
4661 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
4662 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
4663 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
4665 ** Tool bar support.
4667 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
4668 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
4669 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
4670 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
4671 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
4672 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
4674 *** Tool bar item definitions
4676 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
4677 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
4678 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
4680 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
4681 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
4682 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
4683 property (see below).
4685 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
4686 binding are currently ignored.
4688 The following properties are recognized:
4692 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
4697 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
4701 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
4702 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
4703 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
4705 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
4707 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
4708 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
4712 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
4713 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
4714 meaning of each of the four elements:
4716 Index Use when item is
4717 ----------------------------------------
4718 0 enabled and selected
4719 1 enabled and deselected
4720 2 disabled and selected
4721 3 disabled and deselected
4723 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
4724 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
4726 `:help HELP-STRING'.
4728 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
4729 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
4731 The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding
4732 toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used
4733 to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the
4736 The default bindings use a menu-item :filter to derive the tool-bar
4737 dynamically from variable `tool-bar-map' which may be set
4738 buffer-locally to override the global map.
4740 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
4742 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
4743 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
4744 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
4746 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
4747 raised when the mouse moves over them.
4749 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
4750 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
4751 pixels, or a pair of integers (X . Y) specifying horizontal and
4752 vertical margins . Default is 1.
4754 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
4755 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
4757 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
4759 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
4762 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
4763 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
4764 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
4766 is the original tool bar item definition, then
4768 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
4770 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
4773 ** Mode line changes.
4775 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
4777 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
4778 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
4779 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
4781 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
4782 a `local-map' text property.
4784 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
4785 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
4787 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
4788 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
4789 `local-map' property.
4791 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
4792 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
4795 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
4796 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
4798 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
4799 variable mode-line-format to nil.
4801 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
4803 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
4804 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
4805 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
4806 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
4809 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
4812 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
4813 position in the header-line.
4815 ** Text property `display'
4817 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text,
4818 replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is
4819 also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of
4820 the `display' property should be a display specification, as described
4821 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
4823 *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas
4825 To replace the text having the `display' property with some other
4826 text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'.
4828 If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left
4829 marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in
4830 the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING
4831 is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
4832 simpler form STRING as property value.
4834 *** Variable width and height spaces
4836 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
4837 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
4838 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
4839 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
4840 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
4841 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
4842 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
4844 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
4845 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
4846 properties described below.
4848 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
4849 characters having the `display' property.
4853 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
4854 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
4856 - :relative-width FACTOR
4858 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
4859 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
4860 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
4861 width of that character by FACTOR.
4865 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
4866 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
4868 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
4872 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
4875 - :relative-height FACTOR
4877 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
4878 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
4882 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
4883 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
4884 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
4887 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
4891 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
4892 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
4893 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
4894 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
4895 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
4896 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
4897 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
4898 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
4899 as display specification.
4901 *** Other display properties
4903 - (space-width FACTOR)
4905 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
4906 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
4911 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
4913 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
4914 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
4915 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
4916 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
4917 a font is available counts as a step.
4919 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
4920 as tall as the frame's default font.
4922 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
4923 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
4925 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
4926 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
4930 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
4931 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
4932 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
4933 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
4934 `height' subproperty.
4936 *** Conditional display properties
4938 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
4939 has the form `(when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC applies
4940 only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated. During the
4941 evaluation, `object' is bound to the string or buffer having the
4942 conditional display property; `position' and `buffer-position' are
4943 bound to the position within `object' and the buffer position where
4944 the display property was found, respectively. Both positions can be
4945 different when object is a string.
4947 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
4950 ** New menu separator types.
4952 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
4953 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
4954 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
4955 to specify other menu separator types.
4957 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
4959 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
4962 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
4964 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
4966 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
4968 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
4970 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
4972 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
4974 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
4976 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
4978 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
4980 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the form
4981 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
4983 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
4985 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
4987 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
4989 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
4991 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
4993 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
4995 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
4997 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
4999 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
5001 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
5003 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
5005 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
5007 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
5009 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
5011 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
5012 the corresponding single-line separators.
5014 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
5016 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
5017 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
5018 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
5019 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
5020 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
5021 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
5022 default foreground is black.
5024 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
5025 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
5026 `ScrollBarBackground').
5028 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
5029 settings for scroll bar colors.
5031 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
5032 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
5034 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
5035 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
5036 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
5037 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
5038 the original window start.
5040 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
5041 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
5042 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
5044 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
5046 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
5047 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
5048 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
5049 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
5051 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
5052 fixed-width and fixed-height.
5054 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
5056 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
5057 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
5058 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
5059 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
5060 temporarily to nil, for example
5062 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
5063 (enlarge-window 10))
5065 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
5066 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
5068 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
5069 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
5070 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
5071 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
5072 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
5073 support a vertical-bar cursor).
5077 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
5079 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
5082 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
5084 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
5086 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
5087 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
5088 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
5089 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
5090 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
5092 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
5096 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
5098 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
5102 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
5104 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
5105 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
5107 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
5109 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
5111 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
5112 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
5113 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
5115 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
5116 is the one that is used.
5118 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
5119 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
5120 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
5121 separate from the command's regular output.
5122 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
5123 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
5124 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
5127 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
5128 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
5129 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
5130 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
5132 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
5133 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
5134 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
5135 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
5137 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
5138 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
5139 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
5140 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
5142 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
5143 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
5144 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
5145 they never ignore case.
5147 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
5148 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
5149 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
5150 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
5151 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
5152 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
5153 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
5155 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
5156 the same format that was used in the file before.
5158 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
5159 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
5161 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
5162 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
5163 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
5165 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
5166 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
5167 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
5168 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
5169 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
5170 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
5171 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
5173 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
5174 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
5175 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
5176 format. You can now customize these variables.
5178 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
5179 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
5180 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
5181 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
5183 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
5184 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
5185 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
5187 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
5188 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
5189 doesn't have any effect.
5191 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
5194 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
5195 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
5196 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
5198 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
5199 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
5200 `auto-show-mode' command.
5202 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
5203 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
5204 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
5205 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
5206 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
5208 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
5209 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
5211 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
5212 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
5213 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
5215 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
5216 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
5217 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
5218 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
5220 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
5222 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
5223 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
5224 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
5225 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
5226 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
5228 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
5229 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
5231 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
5232 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
5233 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
5234 `?' on other systems.
5236 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
5237 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
5240 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
5241 current codepage when it starts.
5245 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
5246 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
5247 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
5248 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
5249 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
5250 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
5254 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
5255 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
5257 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
5258 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
5259 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
5260 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
5261 buffer-file-coding-system.
5263 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
5264 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
5267 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
5268 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
5269 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
5270 list of possible coding systems.
5274 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
5275 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
5276 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
5277 docstring for details.
5279 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
5280 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
5281 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
5282 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
5283 lineup functions use this feature currently.
5285 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
5286 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
5288 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
5289 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
5291 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
5292 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
5293 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
5294 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
5297 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
5298 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
5300 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
5301 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
5302 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
5303 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
5305 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
5306 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
5307 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
5308 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
5309 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
5311 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
5313 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
5315 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
5316 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
5318 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
5320 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
5321 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
5322 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
5323 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
5324 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
5328 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
5329 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
5330 Gnus manual for the full story.
5332 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
5333 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
5334 group, which is created automatically.
5336 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
5339 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
5341 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
5342 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
5344 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
5347 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
5349 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
5350 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
5352 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
5354 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
5355 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
5357 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
5358 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
5360 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
5361 control over simplification.
5363 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
5365 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
5368 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
5370 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
5372 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
5373 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
5374 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
5376 *** Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
5377 `a' forces normal posting method.
5379 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
5382 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
5385 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
5386 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
5388 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
5391 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
5393 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
5395 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
5396 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
5398 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
5399 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
5401 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
5403 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
5406 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
5407 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
5409 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
5410 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
5412 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
5414 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
5416 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
5418 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
5420 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
5421 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
5422 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
5424 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
5425 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
5426 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
5427 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
5428 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
5430 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
5431 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
5432 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
5433 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
5435 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
5436 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
5437 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
5440 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
5442 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
5443 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
5445 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
5446 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
5447 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
5448 removed from the label.
5450 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
5451 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
5453 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
5454 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
5456 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
5457 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
5460 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
5462 ** New/deleted modes and packages
5464 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
5465 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
5467 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
5468 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
5469 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
5471 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
5472 changes with a special face.
5474 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
5475 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
5476 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
5478 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
5480 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
5481 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
5482 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
5483 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
5484 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
5486 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
5487 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
5488 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
5490 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
5491 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
5492 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
5493 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
5494 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
5495 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
5496 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
5497 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
5498 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
5500 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
5501 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
5502 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
5503 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
5504 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
5507 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
5508 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
5509 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
5510 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
5511 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
5512 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
5514 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
5515 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
5516 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
5517 was not documented clearly before.
5519 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
5520 This includes Tetris and Snake.
5522 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
5524 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
5525 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
5526 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
5527 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
5529 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
5530 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
5531 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
5533 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
5535 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
5536 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
5538 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
5539 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
5542 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
5543 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
5544 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
5545 file names and attributes are returned.
5547 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
5548 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
5549 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its attributes.
5550 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
5553 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
5554 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
5556 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
5558 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
5559 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
5560 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
5563 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
5564 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
5567 The new function process-running-child-p
5568 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
5569 terminal to its own child process.
5571 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
5572 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
5573 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
5574 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
5576 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
5577 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
5579 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
5580 :included is an alias for :visible.
5582 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
5583 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
5584 to move or copy menu entries.
5586 ** Multibyte editing changes
5588 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
5589 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
5590 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
5591 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
5592 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
5593 (setq char (sref str idx)
5594 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
5595 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
5597 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
5598 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
5599 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
5601 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
5602 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
5603 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
5605 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibited
5607 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
5608 across the boundary.
5610 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
5611 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
5612 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
5613 contains 8-bit characters.
5614 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
5615 contains invalid characters.
5617 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
5618 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
5619 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
5620 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
5623 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
5624 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
5625 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
5626 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
5628 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
5629 compose Thai characters in a string.
5631 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
5632 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
5633 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
5634 menus should always use the third argument.
5636 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
5637 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
5638 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
5639 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
5641 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
5642 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
5643 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
5644 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
5646 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
5647 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
5648 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
5651 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
5653 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
5654 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
5655 requested feature cannot be loaded.
5657 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
5658 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
5659 means to clear out that attribute.
5661 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
5662 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
5664 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
5665 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
5666 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
5667 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
5669 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
5670 the gap of the current buffer.
5672 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
5673 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
5676 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
5677 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
5678 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
5679 it back in after any modifications have been made.
5681 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
5683 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
5684 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
5685 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
5686 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
5687 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
5689 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
5690 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
5691 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
5692 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
5693 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
5695 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
5696 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
5697 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
5699 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
5700 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
5701 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
5702 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
5703 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
5706 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
5707 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
5708 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
5709 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
5711 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
5713 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
5714 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
5715 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
5716 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
5718 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
5719 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
5720 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
5721 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
5722 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
5723 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
5724 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
5727 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
5730 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
5731 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
5732 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
5733 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
5734 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
5736 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
5737 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
5738 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
5739 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
5741 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
5742 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
5743 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
5744 something that most users not do.
5746 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
5747 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
5748 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
5751 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
5754 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
5755 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
5756 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
5757 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
5760 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
5761 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
5762 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
5763 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
5764 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
5767 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
5768 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
5769 to be confused by TeX commands.
5771 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
5772 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
5773 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
5774 of various alternative replacements and actions.
5776 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
5777 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
5778 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
5779 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
5780 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
5782 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
5783 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
5785 ** Changes in input method usage.
5787 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
5788 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
5791 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
5793 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
5794 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
5796 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
5797 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
5799 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
5801 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
5803 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
5804 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
5806 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
5807 given in the following case:
5808 o When you are using a complex input method.
5809 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
5811 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
5812 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
5813 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
5814 setting it to t is helpful.
5816 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
5818 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
5820 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
5821 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
5822 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
5823 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
5826 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
5827 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
5828 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
5831 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
5833 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
5835 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
5836 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
5838 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
5839 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
5840 its owner and group.
5842 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
5843 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
5845 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
5846 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
5848 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
5849 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
5850 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
5851 by the left edge of the rectangle.
5853 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
5854 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
5855 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
5856 for writing keyboard macros.
5858 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
5859 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
5860 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
5861 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
5862 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
5865 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
5867 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
5868 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
5871 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
5872 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
5873 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
5874 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
5876 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
5877 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
5878 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
5880 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
5881 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
5882 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
5883 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
5885 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
5886 failure if the command produces no output.
5888 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
5889 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
5892 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
5893 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
5894 function and variable names.
5896 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
5897 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
5898 file-coding-system-alist.
5900 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
5901 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
5902 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
5903 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
5904 according to the current fontset.
5906 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
5908 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
5909 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
5910 nonascii-insert-offset.
5912 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
5913 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
5914 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
5915 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
5917 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
5918 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
5920 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
5921 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
5923 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
5924 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
5927 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
5928 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
5930 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
5931 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
5932 all variables that have documentation.
5934 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
5935 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
5936 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
5937 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
5938 it should show; the default is 20.
5940 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
5941 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
5944 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
5945 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
5946 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
5947 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
5948 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
5949 Newly added options are included as well.
5951 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
5952 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
5953 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
5955 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
5958 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
5959 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
5961 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
5962 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
5965 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
5966 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
5969 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
5970 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
5971 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
5972 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
5975 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
5977 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
5978 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
5979 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
5981 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
5982 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
5983 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
5988 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
5989 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
5991 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
5992 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
5994 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
5995 read and post multi-lingual articles.
5997 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
5998 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
5999 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
6000 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
6001 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
6002 made invisible again.
6004 ** Mail reading and sending changes
6006 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
6007 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
6008 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
6011 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
6012 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
6013 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
6014 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
6015 rmail-default-body-file.
6017 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
6018 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
6019 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
6021 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
6022 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
6023 is evaluated to insert the signature.
6025 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
6026 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
6027 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
6028 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
6029 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
6030 especially interested in trying feedmail.
6032 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
6033 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
6034 provided by feedmail are:
6036 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
6037 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
6038 there is also a queue for draft messages
6040 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
6041 be prompted for confirmation
6043 **** does smart filling of address headers
6045 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
6046 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
6047 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
6049 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
6050 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
6051 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
6052 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
6056 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
6057 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
6059 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
6060 run Dired on the directory name at point.
6062 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
6063 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
6064 for a specified regexp.
6068 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
6071 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
6072 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
6075 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
6076 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
6077 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
6078 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
6080 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
6081 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
6082 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
6083 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
6084 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
6086 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
6087 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
6088 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
6089 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
6090 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
6092 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
6093 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
6094 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
6095 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
6097 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
6098 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
6099 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
6101 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
6102 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
6103 session to resolve them.
6105 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
6106 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
6107 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
6110 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
6111 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
6112 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
6113 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
6114 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
6115 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
6118 ** Changes in Font Lock
6120 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
6121 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
6122 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
6123 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
6124 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
6126 ** Frame name display changes
6128 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
6129 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
6130 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
6131 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
6133 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
6134 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
6137 ** Comint (subshell) changes
6139 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
6140 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
6141 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
6143 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
6145 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
6146 that is, the line after the last line you got.
6147 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
6149 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
6150 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
6153 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
6154 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
6155 previously sent input.
6157 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
6158 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
6159 as the search string.
6161 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
6162 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
6166 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
6167 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
6168 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
6171 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
6172 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
6173 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
6174 style is still the default however.
6176 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
6178 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
6179 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
6180 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
6182 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
6183 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
6185 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
6186 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
6188 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
6189 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
6191 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
6192 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
6194 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
6195 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
6196 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
6197 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
6199 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
6201 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
6202 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
6203 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
6205 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
6206 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
6207 expanding dynamically.
6209 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
6210 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
6212 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
6213 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
6214 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
6215 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
6217 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
6219 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6221 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
6222 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
6223 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
6224 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
6225 against the first word in the title.
6227 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
6228 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
6229 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
6230 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
6231 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
6232 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
6234 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
6235 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
6236 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
6237 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
6239 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
6241 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
6242 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
6243 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
6244 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
6245 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
6246 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
6248 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
6249 Editing group once the package is loaded.
6251 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
6252 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
6253 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behavior.
6255 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
6256 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
6260 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
6261 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
6262 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
6264 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
6265 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
6266 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
6267 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
6270 o URLs are automatically skipped
6271 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
6273 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
6275 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
6277 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
6278 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
6279 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
6280 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
6282 *** New recursive parser.
6284 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
6285 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
6286 recursive parser scans the individual files.
6288 *** Parsing only part of a document.
6290 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
6291 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
6292 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
6294 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
6296 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
6298 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
6300 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
6302 *** Using multiple selection buffers
6304 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
6305 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
6307 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
6309 *** References to external documents.
6311 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
6312 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
6313 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
6314 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
6315 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
6316 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
6317 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
6319 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
6321 The built-in command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
6322 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
6324 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
6325 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
6327 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
6329 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
6330 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
6332 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
6334 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
6335 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
6336 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
6337 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
6338 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
6339 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
6342 *** Support for the varioref package
6344 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
6348 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
6349 and citations are created. These hooks are
6350 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
6351 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
6353 *** Citations outside LaTeX
6355 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
6356 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
6358 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
6360 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
6361 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
6364 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
6366 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
6367 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
6368 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
6369 directories that contain the same file name.
6371 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
6372 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
6373 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
6374 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
6375 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
6376 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
6377 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
6380 ** New modes and packages
6382 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
6383 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
6384 it, but some do not.
6386 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
6389 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
6390 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
6393 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
6395 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
6396 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
6397 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
6398 established system of notation similar to Chess.
6400 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
6401 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
6402 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
6404 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
6405 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
6406 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
6407 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
6408 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
6411 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
6412 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
6414 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
6415 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
6416 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
6417 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
6419 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
6421 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
6422 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
6423 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
6424 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
6425 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
6426 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
6427 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
6428 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
6429 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
6430 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
6431 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
6433 Platform-specific modes:
6435 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
6436 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
6437 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
6438 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
6439 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
6440 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
6441 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
6442 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
6443 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
6445 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
6447 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
6448 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
6449 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
6450 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
6452 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
6453 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
6454 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
6456 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
6457 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
6458 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
6459 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
6461 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
6462 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
6463 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
6466 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
6467 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
6468 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
6469 current input method for reading this one event.
6471 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
6472 now control whether to output certain characters as
6473 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
6474 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
6475 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
6476 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
6478 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
6480 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
6481 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
6483 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
6484 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
6485 always increases point by 1.
6487 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
6488 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
6490 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
6492 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
6493 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
6494 default value changed. For example,
6496 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
6501 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
6504 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
6505 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
6506 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
6507 `:version' in the top level group.
6509 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
6511 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
6512 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
6514 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
6515 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
6516 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
6519 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
6520 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
6523 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
6524 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
6525 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
6527 ** Frame-local variables.
6529 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
6530 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
6531 local bindings for that variable.
6533 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
6534 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
6535 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
6538 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
6539 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
6540 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
6541 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
6543 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
6544 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
6545 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
6546 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
6548 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
6549 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
6550 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
6551 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
6552 See the documentation in sregex.el.
6554 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
6555 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
6556 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
6557 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
6559 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
6560 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
6562 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
6563 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
6564 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
6566 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
6567 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
6568 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
6569 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
6571 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
6572 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
6575 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
6576 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
6577 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
6578 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
6579 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
6581 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
6582 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
6583 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
6584 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
6586 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
6587 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
6588 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
6589 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
6590 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
6592 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
6593 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
6594 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
6595 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
6597 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
6598 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
6599 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
6601 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
6602 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
6603 was directed to display this buffer.
6605 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
6606 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
6607 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
6608 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
6609 set-window-configuration.
6611 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
6612 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
6613 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
6614 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
6616 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
6617 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
6618 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
6620 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
6621 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
6622 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
6624 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
6625 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
6627 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
6628 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
6630 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
6631 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
6632 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
6634 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
6635 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
6636 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
6637 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
6641 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
6642 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
6645 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
6646 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
6647 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
6648 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
6649 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
6651 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
6653 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
6654 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
6655 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
6656 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
6659 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
6660 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
6661 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
6662 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
6663 The supported properties include
6665 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6667 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6668 item should appear in the menu.
6670 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
6671 which will be REAL-BINDING.
6672 It should return a binding to use instead.
6674 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
6675 binding for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
6676 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
6677 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
6678 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
6681 This means that the command normally has no
6682 keyboard equivalent.
6683 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
6684 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
6685 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
6686 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
6687 value says whether this button is currently selected.
6689 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
6690 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
6692 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
6696 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
6697 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
6698 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
6699 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
6701 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
6703 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6704 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
6705 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
6706 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
6707 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
6708 forward, away from the user.
6710 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6712 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
6713 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
6714 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
6715 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
6716 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
6718 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
6720 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6721 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
6722 that were dragged and dropped.
6724 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6726 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
6728 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
6729 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
6730 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
6732 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
6733 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
6734 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
6736 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
6737 in Emacs 19 and before.
6739 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
6740 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
6742 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
6743 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
6744 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
6745 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
6747 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
6748 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
6749 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
6750 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
6751 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
6753 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
6754 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
6755 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
6756 consistent with the new representation.
6758 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
6759 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
6760 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
6761 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6763 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
6764 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
6765 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
6767 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
6768 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
6769 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6771 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
6772 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
6773 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
6775 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6776 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
6778 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6779 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
6781 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
6782 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
6783 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
6784 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
6786 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
6787 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
6789 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
6790 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
6791 buffer or string being searched.
6793 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
6794 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
6795 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
6796 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
6797 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
6798 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
6799 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
6801 *** Structure of coding system changed.
6803 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
6804 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
6805 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
6806 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
6807 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
6808 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
6809 define-coding-system-alias.
6811 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
6812 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
6813 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
6814 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
6815 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
6816 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
6817 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
6820 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
6821 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
6822 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
6823 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
6825 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
6826 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
6827 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
6828 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
6830 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
6831 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
6832 This function requires a user interaction.
6834 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
6835 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
6836 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
6837 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
6838 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
6839 select-safe-coding-system.
6841 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
6842 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
6843 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
6846 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
6847 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
6848 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
6850 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
6851 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
6852 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
6853 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
6855 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
6856 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
6857 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
6860 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
6861 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
6863 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
6864 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
6865 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
6866 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
6867 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
6868 range of characters.
6870 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
6871 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
6873 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
6874 in the current buffer at position POS.
6876 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
6877 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
6878 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
6879 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
6880 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
6881 binding input-method-function to nil.
6883 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
6884 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
6885 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
6886 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
6887 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
6889 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
6890 subsequent events of a key sequence.
6892 *** You can customize any language environment by using
6893 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
6895 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
6896 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
6897 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
6898 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
6899 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
6901 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
6903 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
6904 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
6905 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
6908 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
6909 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
6911 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
6912 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
6913 in your .emacs file.)
6915 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
6916 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
6918 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
6919 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
6921 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
6922 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
6925 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
6926 delete the character before point, as usual.
6928 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
6929 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
6930 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
6932 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
6933 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
6934 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
6935 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
6936 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
6939 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
6940 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
6941 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
6942 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
6943 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
6945 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
6946 and is an alias for it.
6948 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
6949 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
6951 ** Scrolling changes
6953 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
6954 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
6956 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
6957 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
6960 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
6961 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
6962 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
6963 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
6965 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
6966 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
6967 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
6968 recenters the window.
6970 ** International character set support (MULE)
6972 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
6973 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
6974 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
6975 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
6976 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
6977 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
6979 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
6980 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
6981 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
6982 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
6983 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
6985 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
6986 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
6987 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
6988 language, to make it possible to type them.
6990 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
6991 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
6993 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
6994 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
6996 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
6998 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
7000 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
7001 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
7002 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
7003 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
7004 characters for their work until they want to change.
7008 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
7009 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
7010 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
7011 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
7012 support several input methods.
7014 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
7015 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
7018 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
7019 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
7020 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
7021 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
7022 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
7025 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
7026 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
7027 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
7028 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
7029 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
7031 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
7032 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
7033 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
7034 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
7036 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
7037 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
7038 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
7039 the first guess is wrong.
7041 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
7042 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
7044 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
7045 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
7046 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
7047 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
7049 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
7050 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
7051 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
7052 translate automatically to and from either one.
7054 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
7056 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
7057 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
7058 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
7061 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
7062 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
7063 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
7064 multibyte characters in that buffer.
7066 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
7067 character conversion as well.
7069 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
7071 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
7072 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
7073 requires using many fonts.
7075 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
7076 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
7078 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
7079 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
7080 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
7081 you would use a font.
7083 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
7084 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
7085 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
7087 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
7088 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
7091 *** Defining fontsets.
7093 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
7094 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
7095 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
7097 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
7098 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
7099 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
7100 standard fontset are created automatically.
7102 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
7103 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
7104 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
7105 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
7106 name is `fontset-startup'.
7108 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
7109 The resource value should have this form:
7110 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
7111 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
7112 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
7113 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
7114 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
7115 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
7116 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
7117 CHARSET-NAME should be the name of a character set, and FONT-NAME
7118 should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
7120 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
7121 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
7122 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
7124 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
7125 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
7127 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
7128 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
7129 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
7130 Here is the substitution rule:
7131 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
7132 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
7133 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
7134 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
7135 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
7137 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
7138 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
7139 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
7141 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
7142 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
7143 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
7144 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
7147 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
7148 defaults for a particular choice of language.
7150 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
7151 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
7152 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
7153 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
7154 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
7155 system for new files that you create.
7157 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
7158 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
7159 whole Emacs session.
7161 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
7162 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
7163 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
7165 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
7166 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
7167 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
7168 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
7169 coding systems that Emacs supports.
7171 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
7172 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
7173 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
7174 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
7175 is used for *the immediately following command*.
7177 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
7178 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
7180 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
7181 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
7183 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
7184 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
7186 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
7187 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
7188 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
7189 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
7192 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
7193 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
7194 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
7195 translated into that character code.
7197 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
7198 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
7200 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
7202 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
7203 the coding system for keyboard input.
7205 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
7206 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
7207 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
7209 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
7211 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
7212 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
7213 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
7214 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
7215 designed to work with terminals.
7217 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
7218 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
7219 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
7220 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
7221 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
7222 in the corresponding buffer.
7224 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
7226 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
7227 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
7228 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
7230 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
7231 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
7232 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
7235 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
7236 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
7238 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
7239 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
7240 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
7241 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
7243 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
7244 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
7245 related information.
7247 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
7248 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
7251 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
7252 information about the support for a particular language.
7253 You specify the language as an argument.
7255 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
7256 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
7259 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
7260 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
7261 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
7262 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
7264 A alternativnyj (Russian)
7266 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
7267 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
7268 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
7269 E euc-japan (Japanese)
7270 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
7271 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
7272 K euc-korea (Korean)
7275 S shift_jis (Japanese)
7278 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
7279 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
7280 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
7284 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
7285 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
7286 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
7287 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
7289 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
7290 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
7292 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
7293 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
7294 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
7295 Rmail files themselves.
7297 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
7298 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
7300 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
7303 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
7304 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
7305 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
7306 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
7307 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
7309 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
7310 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
7311 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
7314 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
7315 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
7316 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
7317 without any conversion.
7319 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
7320 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
7321 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
7322 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
7324 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
7325 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
7327 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
7328 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
7330 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
7331 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
7333 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
7334 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
7335 in the buffer before point.
7337 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
7338 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
7341 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
7342 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
7344 ** File locking works with NFS now.
7346 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
7347 in the same directory as FILENAME.
7349 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
7350 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
7351 can become a bottleneck.
7353 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
7354 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
7355 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
7356 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
7357 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
7358 so useful that the change is worth while.
7360 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
7361 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
7362 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
7363 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
7365 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
7366 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
7369 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
7370 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
7371 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
7373 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
7374 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
7375 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
7377 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
7378 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
7379 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
7381 ** Changes in View mode.
7383 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
7384 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
7386 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
7387 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
7389 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
7392 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
7393 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
7395 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
7396 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
7397 not just the selected window.
7399 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
7400 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
7401 turns View mode on or off.
7403 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
7404 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
7405 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
7407 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
7408 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
7410 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
7411 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
7412 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
7413 which version to compare with.
7415 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
7416 blocks if a match is inside the block.
7418 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
7419 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
7420 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
7421 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
7423 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
7424 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
7425 blocks, all of them or none.
7427 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
7428 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
7431 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
7432 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
7433 However, the mode will not be changed if
7434 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
7435 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
7436 not suitable for ordinary files, or
7437 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
7439 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
7441 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
7442 these commands do not change the major mode.
7444 ** M-x occur changes.
7446 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
7447 it performs a case-sensitive search.
7449 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
7450 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
7451 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
7453 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
7454 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
7455 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
7456 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
7457 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
7459 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
7460 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
7461 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
7462 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
7464 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7465 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
7466 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
7468 ** Outline mode changes.
7470 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
7472 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
7474 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
7475 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
7476 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
7479 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
7480 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
7483 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
7484 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
7486 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
7488 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7489 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
7490 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
7491 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
7493 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
7494 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
7495 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
7497 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
7498 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
7501 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
7502 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
7503 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
7504 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
7506 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
7507 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
7508 can be. The default value is 30.
7510 ** Changes in Mail mode.
7512 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
7513 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
7514 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
7515 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
7516 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
7519 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
7520 compose-mail-other-frame.
7522 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
7523 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
7524 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
7525 buffer that shows the original message.
7527 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
7528 with separator lines around the contents.
7530 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
7531 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
7532 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
7533 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
7535 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
7537 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
7538 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
7539 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
7540 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
7542 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
7543 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
7546 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
7547 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
7550 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
7551 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
7552 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
7553 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
7555 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
7556 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
7557 be taken to be magic.
7559 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
7560 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
7561 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
7563 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
7564 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
7566 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
7567 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
7569 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
7571 new key dired.el binding old key
7572 ------- ---------------- -------
7573 * c dired-change-marks c
7575 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
7576 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
7577 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
7579 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
7580 * ? dired-unmark-all-files C-M-?
7581 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
7582 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
7583 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
7584 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
7588 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
7589 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
7590 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
7591 each time you run it.
7593 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
7594 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
7596 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
7597 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
7598 means to move in the opposite direction.
7600 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
7601 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
7603 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
7604 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
7605 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
7606 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
7611 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
7613 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
7616 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
7617 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
7619 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
7622 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
7624 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
7626 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
7628 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
7629 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
7630 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
7632 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
7634 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
7636 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
7637 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
7639 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
7640 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
7641 used to pick articles.
7643 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
7644 another have been added.
7646 `M-x gnus-change-server'
7648 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
7649 generating lines in buffers.
7651 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
7654 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
7656 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
7658 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
7660 *** Scores can be decayed.
7662 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
7664 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
7665 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
7667 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
7670 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
7672 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
7673 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `C-M-d'.
7675 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
7677 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
7678 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
7680 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
7681 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
7683 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
7686 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
7687 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
7689 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
7691 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
7693 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
7695 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
7697 Use the `Y c' command.
7699 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
7701 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
7703 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
7705 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
7706 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
7708 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
7710 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
7712 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
7713 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
7715 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
7717 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
7718 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
7719 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
7720 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
7723 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
7724 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
7725 particular news group. This can be done by:
7727 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
7729 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
7730 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
7731 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
7732 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
7733 for reading and posting).
7735 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
7736 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
7737 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
7738 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
7741 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
7742 default. Here are some of these default settings:
7744 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
7745 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
7746 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
7747 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
7748 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
7750 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
7751 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
7755 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
7756 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
7757 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
7758 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
7759 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
7762 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
7763 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
7764 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
7765 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
7766 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
7767 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
7769 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
7770 of the current buffer.
7772 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
7773 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
7774 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
7776 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
7777 style that the Python developers like.
7779 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
7780 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
7781 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
7785 *** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
7786 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
7787 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
7789 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
7790 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
7793 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
7794 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
7796 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
7797 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
7798 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
7799 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
7801 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
7802 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
7804 ** Calendar changes.
7806 *** A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or
7807 subclasses of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow
7808 you do this for the year of the selected date, or the
7809 following/previous years.
7811 *** There is now support for the Baha'i calendar system. Use `pb' in
7812 the *Calendar* buffer to display the current Baha'i date. The Baha'i
7813 calendar, or "Badi calendar" is a system of 19 months with 19 days
7814 each, and 4 intercalary days (5 during a Gregorian leap year). The
7815 calendar begins May 23, 1844, with each of the months named after a
7816 supposed attribute of God.
7820 There are some new user variables and subgroups for customizing the page
7823 *** Headers & Footers (subgroup)
7825 Some printer systems print a header page and force the first page to
7826 be printed on the back of the header page when using duplex. If your
7827 printer system has this behavior, set variable
7828 `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' to t.
7830 If variable `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' is non-nil, it prints a
7831 blank page as the very first printed page. So, it behaves as if the
7832 very first character of buffer (or region) were a form feed ^L (\014).
7834 The variable `ps-spool-config' specifies who is responsible for
7835 setting duplex mode and page size. Valid values are:
7837 lpr-switches duplex and page size are configured by `ps-lpr-switches'.
7838 Don't forget to set `ps-lpr-switches' to select duplex
7839 printing for your printer.
7841 setpagedevice duplex and page size are configured by ps-print using the
7842 setpagedevice PostScript operator.
7844 nil duplex and page size are configured by ps-print *not* using
7845 the setpagedevice PostScript operator.
7847 The variable `ps-spool-tumble' specifies how the page images on
7848 opposite sides of a sheet are oriented with respect to each other. If
7849 `ps-spool-tumble' is nil, ps-print produces output suitable for
7850 bindings on the left or right. If `ps-spool-tumble' is non-nil,
7851 ps-print produces output suitable for bindings at the top or bottom.
7852 This variable takes effect only if `ps-spool-duplex' is non-nil.
7853 The default value is nil.
7855 The variable `ps-header-frame-alist' specifies a header frame
7856 properties alist. Valid frame properties are:
7858 fore-color Specify the foreground frame color.
7859 Value should be a float number between 0.0 (black
7860 color) and 1.0 (white color), or a string which is a
7861 color name, or a list of 3 float numbers which
7862 correspond to the Red Green Blue color scale, each
7863 float number between 0.0 (dark color) and 1.0 (bright
7864 color). The default is 0 ("black").
7866 back-color Specify the background frame color (similar to fore-color).
7867 The default is 0.9 ("gray90").
7869 shadow-color Specify the shadow color (similar to fore-color).
7870 The default is 0 ("black").
7872 border-color Specify the border color (similar to fore-color).
7873 The default is 0 ("black").
7875 border-width Specify the border width.
7878 Any other property is ignored.
7880 Don't change this alist directly; instead use Custom, or the
7881 `ps-value', `ps-get', `ps-put' and `ps-del' functions (see there for
7884 Ps-print can also print footers. The footer variables are:
7885 `ps-print-footer', `ps-footer-offset', `ps-print-footer-frame',
7886 `ps-footer-font-family', `ps-footer-font-size', `ps-footer-line-pad',
7887 `ps-footer-lines', `ps-left-footer', `ps-right-footer' and
7888 `ps-footer-frame-alist'. These variables are similar to those
7889 controlling headers.
7891 *** Color management (subgroup)
7893 If `ps-print-color-p' is non-nil, the buffer's text will be printed in
7896 *** Face Management (subgroup)
7898 If you need to print without worrying about face background colors,
7899 set the variable `ps-use-face-background' which specifies if face
7900 background should be used. Valid values are:
7902 t always use face background color.
7903 nil never use face background color.
7904 (face...) list of faces whose background color will be used.
7906 *** N-up printing (subgroup)
7908 The variable `ps-n-up-printing' specifies the number of pages per
7911 The variable `ps-n-up-margin' specifies the margin in points (pt)
7912 between the sheet border and the n-up printing.
7914 If variable `ps-n-up-border-p' is non-nil, a border is drawn around
7917 The variable `ps-n-up-filling' specifies how the page matrix is filled
7918 on each sheet of paper. Following are the valid values for
7919 `ps-n-up-filling' with a filling example using a 3x4 page matrix:
7921 `left-top' 1 2 3 4 `left-bottom' 9 10 11 12
7925 `right-top' 4 3 2 1 `right-bottom' 12 11 10 9
7929 `top-left' 1 4 7 10 `bottom-left' 3 6 9 12
7933 `top-right' 10 7 4 1 `bottom-right' 12 9 6 3
7937 Any other value is treated as `left-top'.
7939 *** Zebra stripes (subgroup)
7941 The variable `ps-zebra-color' controls the zebra stripes grayscale or
7944 The variable `ps-zebra-stripe-follow' specifies how zebra stripes
7945 continue on next page. Visually, valid values are (the character `+'
7946 to the right of each column indicates that a line is printed):
7948 `nil' `follow' `full' `full-follow'
7949 Current Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7950 1 XXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXX + 1 XXXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7951 2 XXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXX + 2 XXXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7952 3 XXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXX + 3 XXXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7956 7 XXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXX + 7 XXXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7957 8 XXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXX + 8 XXXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7958 9 XXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXX + 9 XXXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7961 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7962 Next Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7963 12 XXXXX + 12 + 10 XXXXXX + 10 +
7964 13 XXXXX + 13 XXXXXXXX + 11 XXXXXX + 11 +
7965 14 XXXXX + 14 XXXXXXXX + 12 XXXXXX + 12 +
7966 15 + 15 XXXXXXXX + 13 + 13 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7967 16 + 16 + 14 + 14 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7968 17 + 17 + 15 + 15 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7969 18 XXXXX + 18 + 16 XXXXXX + 16 +
7970 19 XXXXX + 19 XXXXXXXX + 17 XXXXXX + 17 +
7971 20 XXXXX + 20 XXXXXXXX + 18 XXXXXX + 18 +
7974 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7976 Any other value is treated as `nil'.
7979 *** Printer management (subgroup)
7981 The variable `ps-printer-name-option' determines the option used by
7982 some utilities to indicate the printer name; it's used only when
7983 `ps-printer-name' is a non-empty string. If you're using the lpr
7984 utility to print, for example, `ps-printer-name-option' should be set
7987 The variable `ps-manual-feed' indicates if the printer requires manual
7988 paper feeding. If it's nil, automatic feeding takes place. If it's
7989 non-nil, manual feeding takes place.
7991 The variable `ps-end-with-control-d' specifies whether C-d (\x04)
7992 should be inserted at end of the generated PostScript. Non-nil means
7995 *** Page settings (subgroup)
7997 If variable `ps-warn-paper-type' is nil, it's *not* treated as an
7998 error if the PostScript printer doesn't have a paper with the size
7999 indicated by `ps-paper-type'; the default paper size will be used
8000 instead. If `ps-warn-paper-type' is non-nil, an error is signaled if
8001 the PostScript printer doesn't support a paper with the size indicated
8002 by `ps-paper-type'. This is used when `ps-spool-config' is set to
8005 The variable `ps-print-upside-down' determines the orientation for
8006 printing pages: nil means `normal' printing, non-nil means
8007 `upside-down' printing (that is, the page is rotated by 180 degrees).
8009 The variable `ps-selected-pages' specifies which pages to print. If
8010 it's nil, all pages are printed. If it's a list, list elements may be
8011 integers specifying a single page to print, or cons cells (FROM . TO)
8012 specifying to print from page FROM to TO. Invalid list elements, that
8013 is integers smaller than one, or elements whose FROM is greater than
8014 its TO, are ignored.
8016 The variable `ps-even-or-odd-pages' specifies how to print even/odd
8017 pages. Valid values are:
8019 nil print all pages.
8021 `even-page' print only even pages.
8023 `odd-page' print only odd pages.
8025 `even-sheet' print only even sheets.
8026 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
8027 `even-page', but for values greater than 1, it'll
8028 print only the even sheet of paper.
8030 `odd-sheet' print only odd sheets.
8031 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
8032 `odd-page'; but for values greater than 1, it'll print
8033 only the odd sheet of paper.
8035 Any other value is treated as nil.
8037 If you set `ps-selected-pages' (see there for documentation), pages
8038 are filtered by `ps-selected-pages', and then by
8039 `ps-even-or-odd-pages'. For example, if we have:
8041 (setq ps-selected-pages '(1 4 (6 . 10) (12 . 16) 20))
8043 and we combine this with `ps-even-or-odd-pages' and
8044 `ps-n-up-printing', we get:
8046 `ps-n-up-printing' = 1:
8047 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
8048 nil 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20
8049 even-page 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
8050 odd-page 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
8051 even-sheet 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
8052 odd-sheet 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
8054 `ps-n-up-printing' = 2:
8055 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
8056 nil 1/4, 6/7, 8/9, 10/12, 13/14, 15/16, 20
8057 even-page 4/6, 8/10, 12/14, 16/20
8058 odd-page 1/7, 9/13, 15
8059 even-sheet 6/7, 10/12, 15/16
8060 odd-sheet 1/4, 8/9, 13/14, 20
8062 *** Miscellany (subgroup)
8064 The variable `ps-error-handler-message' specifies where error handler
8065 messages should be sent.
8067 It is also possible to add a user-defined PostScript prologue code in
8068 front of all generated prologue code by setting the variable
8069 `ps-user-defined-prologue'.
8071 The variable `ps-line-number-font' specifies the font for line numbers.
8073 The variable `ps-line-number-font-size' specifies the font size in
8074 points for line numbers.
8076 The variable `ps-line-number-color' specifies the color for line
8077 numbers. See `ps-zebra-color' for documentation.
8079 The variable `ps-line-number-step' specifies the interval in which
8080 line numbers are printed. For example, if `ps-line-number-step' is set
8081 to 2, the printing will look like:
8093 integer an integer specifying the interval in which line numbers are
8094 printed. If it's smaller than or equal to zero, 1
8097 `zebra' specifies that only the line number of the first line in a
8098 zebra stripe is to be printed.
8100 Any other value is treated as `zebra'.
8102 The variable `ps-line-number-start' specifies the starting point in
8103 the interval given by `ps-line-number-step'. For example, if
8104 `ps-line-number-step' is set to 3, and `ps-line-number-start' is set to
8105 3, the output will look like:
8119 The variable `ps-postscript-code-directory' specifies the directory
8120 where the PostScript prologue file used by ps-print is found.
8122 The variable `ps-line-spacing' determines the line spacing in points,
8123 for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
8126 The variable `ps-paragraph-spacing' determines the paragraph spacing,
8127 in points, for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
8130 The variable `ps-paragraph-regexp' specifies the paragraph delimiter.
8132 The variable `ps-begin-cut-regexp' and `ps-end-cut-regexp' specify the
8133 start and end of a region to cut out when printing.
8135 ** hideshow changes.
8137 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
8140 *** Support for java-mode added.
8142 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
8143 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
8145 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the comments at
8146 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
8147 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
8149 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
8150 robust and a lot faster.
8152 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
8154 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
8155 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
8156 documentation for more details.
8158 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
8160 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
8161 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
8162 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
8163 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
8164 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
8166 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
8167 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
8168 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
8169 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
8175 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
8176 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
8177 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
8178 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
8179 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
8180 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
8182 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
8184 *** Maximum decoration
8186 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
8187 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
8188 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
8189 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
8190 to get the old behavior.
8194 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
8196 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
8197 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
8199 *** Configurable support
8201 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
8202 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
8203 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
8204 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
8205 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
8206 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
8207 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
8209 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
8210 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
8211 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
8213 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
8215 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
8216 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
8219 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
8221 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
8227 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
8228 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
8229 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
8230 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
8232 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
8234 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
8235 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
8236 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
8238 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
8240 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
8241 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
8242 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
8243 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
8244 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
8245 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
8246 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
8248 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
8249 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
8250 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
8251 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
8252 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
8253 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
8255 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
8257 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
8258 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
8259 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
8260 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
8262 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
8265 ** Ada mode changes.
8267 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
8268 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
8269 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
8270 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
8273 *** There are two new commands:
8274 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
8275 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
8277 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
8278 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
8279 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
8281 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
8282 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
8283 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
8285 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
8286 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
8287 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
8288 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
8290 ** Scheme mode changes.
8292 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
8293 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
8294 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
8295 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
8298 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
8299 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
8300 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
8301 variables as buffer-local variables.
8303 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
8306 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
8308 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
8309 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
8310 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
8311 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
8313 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
8314 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
8317 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
8318 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
8319 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
8320 option takes precedence.
8322 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
8323 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
8324 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
8326 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
8327 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
8330 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
8331 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
8333 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
8334 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
8337 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
8338 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
8339 these register values no longer become completely useless.
8340 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
8341 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
8342 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
8344 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
8345 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
8346 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
8347 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
8349 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
8350 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
8351 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
8352 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
8353 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
8355 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
8356 since it applies only to the current frame.
8358 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
8359 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
8360 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
8362 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
8363 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
8364 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
8365 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
8366 instead of just the file you are editing.
8370 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
8371 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
8372 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
8373 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
8374 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
8377 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
8378 knows which kind of label is needed.
8380 C-c ) reftex-reference
8381 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
8382 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
8384 C-c [ reftex-citation
8385 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
8386 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
8388 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
8389 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
8392 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
8393 can quickly jump to every section.
8395 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
8396 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
8397 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
8398 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
8399 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
8401 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8403 *** Info documentation is now available.
8405 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
8406 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
8408 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
8409 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
8411 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
8412 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
8414 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
8415 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
8416 appropriate functions.
8418 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
8419 entries. They are bound by default to C-M-l and C-M-h.
8421 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
8424 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
8425 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
8427 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
8430 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
8431 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
8432 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
8434 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
8435 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
8436 prefixed with `ALT'.
8438 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
8439 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
8440 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
8443 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
8444 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
8445 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
8447 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
8448 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
8450 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
8451 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
8452 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
8454 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
8456 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
8458 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
8461 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
8462 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
8465 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
8468 *** Added support for imenu.
8470 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
8471 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
8472 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
8473 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
8475 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
8476 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
8478 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
8480 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
8482 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
8483 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
8484 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
8487 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
8488 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
8490 ** browse-url changes
8492 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
8493 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
8494 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
8495 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
8496 customization variables.
8498 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
8500 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
8501 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
8502 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
8506 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
8507 pops up the Info file for this command.
8509 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
8510 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
8511 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
8514 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
8515 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
8516 files in the same directory.
8518 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
8519 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
8520 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
8524 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
8525 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
8527 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
8528 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
8529 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
8530 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
8531 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
8532 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
8533 color when Viper is in insert state.
8534 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
8535 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
8536 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
8540 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
8541 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
8542 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
8543 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
8544 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
8546 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
8548 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
8549 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
8551 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
8552 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
8553 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
8555 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
8556 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
8557 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
8558 methods and protocols.
8560 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
8561 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
8562 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
8565 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
8566 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
8567 at least M times and as many as N times.
8569 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
8570 in files has changed slightly.
8572 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
8573 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
8574 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
8575 with old time-stamp-format values.
8577 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
8578 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
8579 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
8582 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
8583 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
8584 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
8585 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
8586 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
8587 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
8589 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
8590 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
8591 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
8593 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
8594 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
8595 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
8596 recommended now will continue to work then.
8598 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
8601 ** There are some additional major modes:
8603 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
8604 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
8605 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
8607 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
8608 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
8611 ** New Lisp packages include:
8613 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
8615 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
8616 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
8618 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
8620 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
8623 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
8624 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
8627 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
8628 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
8629 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
8630 strings or comments.
8632 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
8633 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
8634 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
8635 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
8638 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
8639 can visit them by short forms of their names.
8641 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
8642 Emacs Lisp function at point.
8644 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
8646 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
8647 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
8649 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
8651 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
8653 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
8655 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
8656 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
8658 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
8659 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
8660 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
8661 original place after inserting the copy.
8663 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
8666 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
8667 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
8668 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
8670 Enable mouse-drag with:
8671 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
8673 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
8675 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
8676 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
8678 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
8679 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
8683 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
8684 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
8685 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
8686 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
8687 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
8688 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
8689 instance) and vice versa.
8691 To use this package load it using
8692 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
8693 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
8694 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
8695 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
8696 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
8697 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
8699 *** Interface to ph.
8701 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
8703 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
8704 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
8707 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
8709 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
8710 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
8711 while the real cursor does not move.
8713 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
8714 for visiting your favorite web sites.
8716 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
8717 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
8721 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
8722 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
8723 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
8724 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
8726 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
8728 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
8730 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
8732 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
8733 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
8734 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
8735 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
8736 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
8738 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
8739 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
8740 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
8741 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
8742 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
8743 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
8745 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
8747 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
8748 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
8749 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
8750 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
8752 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
8753 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
8755 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
8756 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
8759 ** Basic Lisp changes
8761 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
8762 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
8764 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
8765 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
8768 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
8770 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
8772 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
8773 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
8775 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
8776 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
8779 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
8781 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
8783 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
8785 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
8786 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
8787 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
8790 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
8791 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
8792 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
8794 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
8795 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
8796 adding one of these suffixes.
8798 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
8799 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
8800 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
8802 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
8803 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
8805 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
8807 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
8808 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
8810 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
8811 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
8813 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
8815 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
8816 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
8818 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
8819 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
8820 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
8821 works using `save-current-buffer'.
8823 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
8824 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
8827 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
8828 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
8829 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
8832 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
8833 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
8836 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
8838 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
8839 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
8840 Then it returns that string.
8842 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
8844 (with-output-to-string
8845 (princ "The buffer is ")
8846 (princ (buffer-name)))
8848 returns "The buffer is foo".
8850 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
8853 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
8854 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
8855 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
8857 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
8858 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
8860 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
8861 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
8862 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
8863 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
8864 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
8865 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
8867 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
8868 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
8869 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
8872 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
8873 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
8874 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
8875 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
8876 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
8878 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
8879 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
8880 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
8881 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
8883 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
8884 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
8886 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
8888 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
8889 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
8890 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
8891 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
8894 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
8895 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
8898 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
8900 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
8901 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
8902 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
8903 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
8904 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
8906 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
8908 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
8909 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
8910 more than the number of characters.
8912 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
8913 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
8914 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
8915 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
8916 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
8917 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
8919 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
8920 and returns a string containing those characters.
8922 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
8923 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
8924 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
8925 character, sref signals an error.
8927 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
8928 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
8929 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
8931 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
8932 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
8933 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
8935 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
8936 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
8937 to a vector of the characters in it.
8939 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
8940 of a string. You call it as follows:
8942 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
8944 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
8945 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
8946 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
8947 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
8948 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
8950 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
8951 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
8953 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
8954 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
8956 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
8957 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
8958 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
8959 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
8961 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
8963 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
8965 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
8966 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
8967 are not included in the resulting value.
8969 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
8970 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
8971 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
8972 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
8974 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
8975 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
8976 character extends across that column), then the padding character
8977 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
8978 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
8979 column START-COLUMN.
8981 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
8982 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
8983 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
8984 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
8985 changed text, before the change.
8987 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
8988 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
8989 one character set for each script, not for each language.
8991 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
8993 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
8995 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
8996 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
8998 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
8999 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
9000 which identify the character within that character set.
9002 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
9003 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
9004 opposite of split-char.
9006 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
9007 of all the characters between BEG and END.
9009 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
9010 of all the characters in a string.
9012 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
9013 and specifying coding systems.
9015 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
9016 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
9017 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
9018 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
9019 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
9020 as what to do about code conversion.)
9022 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
9023 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
9025 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
9026 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
9027 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
9029 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
9030 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
9031 to match against a file name.
9033 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
9034 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
9035 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
9036 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
9037 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
9038 specifies the coding system for encoding.
9040 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
9041 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
9043 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
9044 the coding system to use for network sockets.
9046 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
9047 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
9048 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
9051 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
9052 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
9053 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
9054 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
9055 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
9056 specifies the coding system for encoding.
9058 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
9059 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
9061 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
9062 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
9063 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
9064 start the subprocess.
9066 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
9067 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
9068 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
9069 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
9070 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
9072 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
9073 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
9076 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
9077 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
9078 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
9079 connection permanently or until overridden.
9081 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
9082 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
9083 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
9084 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
9085 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
9086 system for one operation at a time.
9088 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
9089 files, subprocesses or network connections.
9091 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
9092 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
9093 The value is a cons cell,
9094 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
9095 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
9096 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
9097 input to the subprocess.
9099 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
9100 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
9102 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
9103 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
9104 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
9106 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
9107 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
9108 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
9109 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
9112 Thus, instead of writing
9114 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
9115 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
9117 you would now write this:
9119 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
9120 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
9124 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
9125 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
9126 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
9127 for a description of them.
9129 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
9130 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
9132 (defgroup ispell nil
9133 "Spell checking using Ispell."
9136 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
9137 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
9138 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
9139 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
9140 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
9142 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
9143 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
9144 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
9145 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
9146 first-level subgroups.
9148 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
9150 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
9151 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
9155 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
9156 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
9157 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
9158 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
9159 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
9160 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
9162 ** Text property changes
9164 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
9167 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
9168 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
9169 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
9170 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
9171 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
9173 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
9174 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
9175 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
9176 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
9178 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
9179 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
9180 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
9182 ** Changes in invisibility features
9184 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
9185 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
9186 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
9187 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
9188 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
9189 make the overlay visible.
9191 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
9192 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
9193 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
9194 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
9195 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
9196 t when it should hide it.
9198 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
9200 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
9201 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
9202 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
9203 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
9204 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
9205 Here is an example of how to do this:
9207 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
9208 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
9209 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
9210 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
9213 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
9216 ;; When done with the overlays:
9217 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
9219 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
9221 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
9223 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
9224 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
9225 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
9226 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
9228 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
9229 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
9230 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
9232 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
9233 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
9235 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
9236 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
9238 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
9239 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
9240 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
9242 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
9243 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
9244 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
9245 determine the syntax type of the character.
9247 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
9248 of the current buffer.
9250 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
9251 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
9252 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
9254 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
9255 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
9256 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
9257 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
9258 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
9260 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
9263 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
9264 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
9265 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
9267 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
9268 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
9269 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
9270 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
9271 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
9273 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
9274 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
9275 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
9277 ** Changes in face features
9279 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
9280 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
9282 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
9283 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
9285 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
9286 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
9288 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
9289 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
9291 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
9292 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
9293 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
9294 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
9297 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
9298 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
9300 ** Changes in file-handling functions
9302 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
9303 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
9304 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
9305 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
9307 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
9310 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
9311 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
9313 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
9314 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
9316 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
9317 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
9319 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
9320 character code conversion as well as other things.
9322 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
9323 (formerly it did not).
9325 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
9326 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
9328 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
9329 instead of constant strings.
9331 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
9332 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
9333 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
9335 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
9336 in the same way as before.
9338 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
9339 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
9340 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
9342 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
9343 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
9344 else, and returns nil.
9346 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
9347 directory cannot be listed.
9349 ** Changes in minibuffer input
9351 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
9352 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
9353 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
9354 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
9357 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
9358 It is available through the history command M-n.
9360 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
9361 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
9362 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
9363 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
9364 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
9366 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
9367 argument in this way.
9369 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
9370 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
9371 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
9373 ** Echo area features
9375 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
9376 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
9377 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
9378 after the echo area is cleared.
9380 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
9381 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
9383 ** Keyboard input features
9385 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
9386 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
9388 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
9389 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
9392 ** Frame-related changes
9394 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
9395 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
9396 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
9398 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
9399 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
9400 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
9402 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
9403 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
9404 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
9405 in the selected frame.
9407 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
9408 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
9409 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
9411 ** X Windows features
9413 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
9414 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
9415 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
9417 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
9418 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
9420 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
9421 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
9422 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
9424 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
9425 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
9427 ** Subprocess features
9429 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
9430 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
9433 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
9434 and returns the output from the command as a string.
9436 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
9437 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
9439 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
9440 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
9442 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
9443 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
9444 goes after the other menu items.
9446 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
9447 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
9448 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
9451 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
9452 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
9454 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
9455 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
9458 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
9459 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
9460 but its hook is still run.
9462 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
9463 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
9465 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
9466 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
9467 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
9469 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
9470 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
9471 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
9474 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
9475 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
9477 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
9478 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
9479 functions like display-time.
9481 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
9482 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
9484 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
9485 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
9486 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
9488 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
9489 if there is an error in compilation.
9491 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
9492 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
9493 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
9494 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
9496 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
9497 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
9498 the *scratch* buffer.
9500 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
9501 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
9502 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
9503 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
9505 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
9506 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
9507 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
9509 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
9510 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
9511 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
9512 and compose-mail-other-frame.
9514 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
9515 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
9516 full name of the specified user will be returned.
9518 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
9519 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
9520 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
9521 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
9522 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
9525 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
9526 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
9527 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
9528 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
9530 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
9531 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
9532 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
9533 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
9535 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
9537 ** imenu.el changes.
9539 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
9540 item from menu created by imenu.
9542 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
9543 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
9544 select one of those items.
9546 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
9548 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
9549 Copyright information:
9551 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
9553 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
9554 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
9555 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
9556 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
9558 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
9559 of this document, or of portions of it,
9560 under the above conditions, provided also that they
9561 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
9565 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"