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1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
4
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8 \f
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
13
14 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
15 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
16 to list them.
17
18 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
19 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if they these are available.
20
21 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
22 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
23
24 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
25 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
26 \f
27 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
28
29 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
30 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
31 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
32 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
33
34 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
35 a version-dependent component.
36
37 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
38 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
39 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
40 character is still bound as before.
41
42 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
43 using that menu.
44
45 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
46 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to executable-chmod.
47
48 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
49 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
50 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
51 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
52 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
53 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
54 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
55
56 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
57 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
58 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
59 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
60 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
61 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
62 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
63 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
64 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
65
66 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
67 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
68
69 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
70 point in a pop-up window.
71
72 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
73 displays all characters in that character set.
74
75 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
76 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
77
78 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
79 on the context.
80
81 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
82
83 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
84 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
85
86 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
87 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
88 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
89 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
90
91 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
92 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
93 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
94 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
95
96 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
97 on the display using several methods
98
99 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
100 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
101 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
102
103 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
104 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
105
106 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
107
108 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
109 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
110
111 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
112 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
113 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
114 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
115
116 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
117 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
118 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
119
120 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
121 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
122
123 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
124 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
125 this behavior.
126
127 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
128 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
129 Emacs dump core.
130
131 ** New X resources recognized
132
133 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
134 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
135 is useful for debugging X problems.
136
137 Example:
138
139 emacs.synchronous: true
140
141 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
142 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
143 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
144 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
145 visual class names are
146
147 TrueColor
148 PseudoColor
149 DirectColor
150 StaticColor
151 GrayScale
152 StaticGray
153
154 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
155 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
156 meaning.
157
158 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
159 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
160 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
161 visual.
162
163 Example:
164
165 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
166
167 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
168 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
169 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
170 resource values are `true' or `on'.
171
172 Example:
173
174 emacs.privateColormap: true
175
176 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
177 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
178 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
179
180 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
181 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
182 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
183 be customized.
184
185 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
186
187 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
188 all frames except the selected one.
189
190 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
191 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
192
193 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
194 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
195 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
196 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
197
198 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
199 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
200
201 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
202 read mail from the menu etc.
203
204 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
205 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
206
207 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
208
209 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
210 macros
211
212 Key binding Macro
213 -------------------------
214 C-c C-c C-s @strong
215 C-c C-c C-e @emph
216 C-c C-c u @url
217 C-c C-c q @quotation
218 C-c C-c m @email
219
220 ** Changes in Outline mode.
221
222 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
223 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
224 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
225
226 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
227 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
228
229 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
230 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
231 several other special buffers.
232
233 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
234 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
235 .emacs file.
236
237 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
238 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
239
240 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
241 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
242 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
243
244 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
245 is running in batch mode. For example,
246
247 (message "%s" (read t))
248
249 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
250 to standard output.
251
252 ** Faces and frame parameters.
253
254 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
255 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
256 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
257 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
258 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
259 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
260 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
261
262 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
263 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
264 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
265 `default' face and vice versa.
266
267 ** New face `menu'.
268
269 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
270 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
271 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
272
273 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
274
275 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
276 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
277 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
278 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
279
280 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
281 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
282 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
283
284 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
285 `ScreenGamma'.
286
287 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
288
289 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
290 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
291 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
292 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
293 the text.
294
295 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
296
297 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
298 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
299 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
300 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
301 specify a font.
302
303 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
304 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
305 under Lisp changes, below.
306
307 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
308
309 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
310 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
311 it is hollow.
312
313 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
314 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
315 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
316 customizing face `fringe'.
317
318 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
319 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
320
321 ** LessTif support.
322
323 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
324 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
325
326 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
327
328 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
329 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
330 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
331 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
332 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
333 Emacs.
334
335 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
336 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
337 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
338 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
339 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
340 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
341
342 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
343 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
344 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
345 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
346 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
347 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
348
349 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
350 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
351 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
352 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
353 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
354
355 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
356
357 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
358 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
359 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
360
361 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
362
363 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
364 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
365 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
366 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
367 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
368 whitespace.
369
370 ** Busy-cursor.
371
372 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
373 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
374
375 ** Blinking cursor
376
377 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
378 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
379 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
380 the group `cursor'.
381
382 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
383
384 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
385 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
386 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
387 details.
388
389 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
390 have to do anything to activate it.
391
392 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
393
394 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
395 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
396 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
397 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
398
399 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
400
401 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
402
403 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
404
405 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
406 LessTif/Motif one.
407
408 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
409 LessTif and Motif.
410
411 ** Hscrolling in C code.
412
413 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
414 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
415 customized.
416
417 ** Tool bar support.
418
419 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
420 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
421
422 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
423
424 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
425 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
426 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
427 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
428 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
429
430 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
431
432 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
433 buffers.
434
435 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
436 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
437
438 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
439
440 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
441 toggles the read-only status.
442
443 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
444
445 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
446
447 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
448 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
449 non-nil.
450
451 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
452
453 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
454 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
455 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
456 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
457 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
458 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
459 on terminals.
460
461 ** Sound support
462
463 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
464 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
465 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
466
467 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
468 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
469 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
470 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
471 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
472 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
473
474 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
475
476 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
477
478 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
479 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
480 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
481
482 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
483 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
484
485 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
486 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
487 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
488
489 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
490
491 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
492 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
493 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
494 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
495
496 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
497 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
498 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
499 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
500
501 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
502 notably at the end of lines.
503
504 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
505 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
506
507 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
508
509 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
510 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
511 after each match to get the replacement text.
512
513 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
514 you edit the replacement string.
515
516 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', let's
517 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
518 lisp-complete-symbol.
519
520 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
521
522 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
523 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
524 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
525 window size by setting the following variable:
526
527 - User option: max-mini-window-height
528
529 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
530 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
531 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
532
533 Default is 0.25.
534
535 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
536
537 ** Changes to hideshow.el
538
539 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
540 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
541
542 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
543
544 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
545 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
546 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
547 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
548 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
549 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
550
551 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
552 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
553 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
554 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
555
556 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
557
558 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
559 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
560 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
561 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
562 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
563
564 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
565 something like this in your .emacs.
566
567 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
568 (lambda ()
569 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
570
571 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
572
573 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
574 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
575 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
576
577 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
578 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
579
580 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
581 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
582
583 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
584 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
585 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
586 a file.
587
588 ** Changes in Font Lock
589
590 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
591 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
592 mode.
593
594 ** Comint (subshell) changes
595
596 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
597 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
598
599 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
600 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
601 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
602
603 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
604 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
605 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
606
607 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and
608 scheme-interaction-mode now highlight user input, and support choosing
609 previous input with mouse-2. To control this feature, see the
610 user-option `comint-highlight-input'.
611
612 ** Changes to Rmail mode
613
614 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
615 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
616 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
617 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
618 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
619 as correspondent.
620
621 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
622 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
623 regexp matching your mail addresses.
624
625 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
626 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
627 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
628 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
629 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
630
631 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
632 like `j'.
633
634 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
635 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
636 digest message.
637
638 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
639 in which folder to put messages automatically.
640
641 ** Changes to TeX mode
642
643 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
644 `latex-mode'.
645
646 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
647
648 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
649 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
650 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
651 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
652 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
653 can be edited from that buffer.
654
655 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
656 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
657 `A' to use all marked entries).
658
659 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
660 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
661
662 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
663 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
664 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
665 been cited.
666
667 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
668 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
669 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
670 in column 1 are always made leaves.
671
672 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
673 has the following new features:
674
675 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
676 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
677 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
678 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
679
680 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
681 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
682 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
683 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
684 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
685 defaults to 1.
686
687 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
688 file names.
689
690 ** Tooltips.
691
692 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
693 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
694 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
695
696 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
697 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
698 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
699 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
700
701 ** Customize changes
702
703 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
704 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
705 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
706
707 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
708 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
709 default).
710
711 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
712 between custom options. Example:
713
714 (defcustom default-input-method nil
715 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
716 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
717 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
718 :group 'mule
719 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
720 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
721
722 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
723 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
724 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
725
726 ** New features in evaluation commands
727
728 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
729 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
730 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
731 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
732 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
733
734 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
735 code when called with a prefix argument.
736
737 ** Ispell changes
738
739 *** The command `ispell' new spell-checks a region if
740 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherise it
741 spell-checks the current buffer.
742
743 ** Dired changes
744
745 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
746 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
747 is, delete only empty directories.
748
749 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
750 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
751 copy directories recursively.
752
753 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
754 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
755 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
756
757 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
758 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
759 directory.
760
761 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
762 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
763 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
764 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
765 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
766
767 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
768 from ls switches.
769
770 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
771 use the -f option when sending mail.
772
773 ** CC mode changes.
774
775 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
776 current user setups (although it's believed that these
777 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
778 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
779 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
780 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
781 release.
782
783 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
784 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
785 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
786 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
787 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
788 have to bother.
789
790 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
791 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
792 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
793 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
794 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
795 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
796
797 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
798 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
799 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
800 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
801 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
802 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
803 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
804 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
805
806 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
807 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
808 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
809 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
810 above.
811
812 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
813 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
814 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
815 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
816 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
817 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
818 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
819 function documentation for more info.
820
821 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
822 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
823 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
824 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
825 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
826 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
827 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
828 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
829
830 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
831
832 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
833 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
834
835 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
836 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
837 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
838 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
839 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
840 style system.
841
842 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
843 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
844 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
845 as far as possible.
846
847 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
848 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
849 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
850 chapter about this in the manual.
851
852 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
853 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
854 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
855 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
856 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
857
858 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
859 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
860 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
861
862 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
863 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
864
865 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
866 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
867 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
868 inside CC Mode.
869
870 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
871 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
872 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
873 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
874 cc-mode/).
875
876 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
877 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
878 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
879 literals.
880
881 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
882 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
883 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
884 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
885 this function.
886
887 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
888 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
889 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
890 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
891 Thanks to Eric Eide.
892
893 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
894 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
895 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
896
897 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
898
899 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
900 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
901 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
902 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
903
904 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
905 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
906 the column specified by comment-column.
907
908 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
909 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
910 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
911 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
912 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
913 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
914
915 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
916 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
917 arguments.
918
919 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
920
921 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
922 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
923 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
924 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
925 Provan).
926
927 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
928
929 ** Makefile mode changes
930
931 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
932
933 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
934 Fontlock mode is active.
935
936 ** Isearch changes
937
938 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
939 so that searches can be resumed.
940
941 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
942 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
943 that started the search.
944
945 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
946 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
947
948 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
949
950 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
951 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
952 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
953 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
954 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
955 `secondary-selection'.
956
957 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
958 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
959 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
960 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
961 usual snappy response.
962
963 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
964 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
965 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
966 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
967
968 ** Changes in sort.el
969
970 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
971 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
972 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
973 numeric base.
974
975 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
976
977 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
978 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
979 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
980
981 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
982 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
983
984 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
985 output ^M at the end of lines.
986
987 ** Shell script mode changes.
988
989 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
990 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
991 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
992
993 ** Etags changes.
994
995 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
996
997 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
998 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
999 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1000 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1001 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1002
1003 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1004 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1005
1006 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1007 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1008
1009 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1010 types.
1011
1012 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1013
1014 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1015
1016 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1017 are now tagged.
1018
1019 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1020 variables are tagged.
1021
1022 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1023
1024 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1025 for PSWrap.
1026
1027 ** Changes in etags.el
1028
1029 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1030 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1031 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1032
1033 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1034 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1035
1036 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1037 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1038 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1039 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1040
1041 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1042
1043 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1044 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1045
1046 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1047
1048 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1049 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1050 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1051
1052 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1053 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1054
1055 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1056 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1057
1058 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1059 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1060 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1061
1062 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1063 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1064 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1065 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1066
1067 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1068 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1069 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1070
1071 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1072
1073 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1074
1075 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1076 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1077 expression from that list, are not checked.
1078
1079 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1080 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1081 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1082 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1083
1084 ** New modes and packages
1085
1086 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1087 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1088
1089 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1090 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1091 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1092
1093 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1094 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1095 separate Texinfo file.
1096
1097 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine
1098 or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1099 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS.
1100 It comes with log-view-mode to view RCS and SCCS logs and log-edit-mode
1101 used to enter checkin log messages.
1102
1103 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1104 without invoking external programs.
1105
1106 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1107 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1108 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1109 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1110 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1111
1112 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1113 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1114
1115 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1116 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1117
1118 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1119 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1120 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1121 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1122 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1123 single step.
1124
1125 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1126 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1127 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1128 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1129
1130 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1131 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1132 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1133
1134 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1135 PostScript.
1136
1137 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1138
1139 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1140
1141 ; comment (until end of line)
1142 A non-terminal
1143 "C" terminal
1144 ?C? special
1145 $A default non-terminal
1146 $"C" default terminal
1147 $?C? default special
1148 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1149 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1150 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1151 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1152 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1153 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1154 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1155 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1156 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1157 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1158 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1159 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1160 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1161 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1162 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1163
1164 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1165
1166 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1167 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1168 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1169 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1170 equal signs of assignments.
1171
1172 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1173 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1174
1175 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1176 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1177 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1178 customize the package.
1179
1180 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1181
1182 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1183 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1184 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1185 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1186 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1187 which answers different needs.
1188
1189 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1190 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1191 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1192 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1193 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1194 to be enabled.
1195
1196 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1197 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1198
1199 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1200
1201 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1202
1203 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1204
1205 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1206 Pascal) language.
1207
1208 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1209 the text at point.
1210
1211 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1212
1213 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1214
1215 *** whitespace.el ???
1216
1217 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1218 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1219 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1220 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1221 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1222 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1223 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1224
1225 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1226
1227 Here is an example of columns:
1228
1229 horse apple bus
1230 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1231 porcupine strawberry airplane
1232
1233 Doing the following settings:
1234
1235 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1236 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1237 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1238 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1239
1240
1241 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1242
1243 M-x delimit-columns-region
1244
1245 It results:
1246
1247 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1248 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1249 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1250
1251 delim-col has the following options:
1252
1253 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1254 before all columns.
1255
1256 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1257 between each column.
1258
1259 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1260 after all columns.
1261
1262 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1263 each column.
1264
1265 delim-col has the following commands:
1266
1267 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1268 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1269
1270 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1271 were operated on recently.
1272
1273 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1274
1275 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1276 recentf at Emacs startup.
1277
1278 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1279 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1280 file list can be displayed:
1281
1282 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1283 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1284 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1285
1286 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1287 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1288
1289 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1290 text.
1291
1292 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1293 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1294 specific to Message mode.
1295
1296 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1297 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1298 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1299
1300 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1301 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1302 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1303
1304 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1305 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1306
1307 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1308
1309 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1310 minibuffer with completion.
1311
1312 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1313 with the diary features.
1314
1315 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1316 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1317
1318 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1319 Fill mode.
1320
1321 ** Withdrawn packages
1322
1323 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1324 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1325
1326 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1327
1328 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1329
1330 \f
1331 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1332 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1333
1334 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1335 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1336 frame or window.
1337
1338 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1339 were added
1340
1341 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1342
1343 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1344 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1345
1346 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1347
1348 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1349 comparison is done with `eq'.
1350
1351 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1352
1353 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1354 has been changed.
1355
1356 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1357 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1358 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1359
1360 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1361 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1362
1363 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1364 function was declared obsolete.
1365
1366 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1367 retained as an alias).
1368
1369 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1370 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1371 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1372
1373 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1374
1375 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1376
1377 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1378 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1379
1380 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1381
1382 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1383
1384 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1385
1386 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1387 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1388 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1389 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1390 returned.
1391
1392 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1393 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1394 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1395 minibuffer even if it is active.
1396
1397 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1398 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1399 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1400 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1401 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1402 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1403
1404 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1405 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1406 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1407 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1408 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1409 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1410 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1411
1412 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1413 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1414 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1415
1416 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1417 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1418 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1419 Default value is nil.
1420
1421 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1422 meaning no limit.
1423
1424 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1425 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1426 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1427
1428 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1429 of a primitive.
1430
1431 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1432 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1433 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1434 than replacing the local map.
1435
1436 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1437 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1438
1439 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1440
1441 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1442 promised long ago.
1443
1444 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1445 \f
1446 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1447
1448 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1449 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1450 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1451 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1452
1453 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1454 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1455 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1456 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1457
1458 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1459 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1460 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1461
1462 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1463 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1464 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1465 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1466 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1467 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1468 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1469 eight-bit-graphic.
1470
1471 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1472
1473 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1474 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1475 character set as previously.
1476
1477 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1478 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1479 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1480
1481 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1482 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1483 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1484 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1485
1486 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1487 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1488
1489 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1490 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1491 "fontset-default".
1492
1493 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1494 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1495
1496 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1497 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1498 buffers and strings.
1499
1500 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1501 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1502 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1503 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1504 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1505 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1506 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1507 also been deleted.
1508
1509 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1510 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1511 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1512
1513 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1514 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1515 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1516 may differ between buffer and string text.
1517
1518 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1519 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1520
1521 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1522 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1523 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1524 `composition' from STRING.
1525
1526 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1527 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1528
1529 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1530 obsolete.
1531
1532 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1533 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1534 character set is not used.
1535
1536 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1537 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1538 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1539
1540 +++
1541 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1542 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1543 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1544
1545 +++
1546 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1547 that offset in the file before writing.
1548
1549 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1550 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1551
1552 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1553 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1554 from which the command was issued.
1555
1556 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1557 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1558 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1559 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1560 operate on.
1561
1562 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1563 to `window-buffer-height'.
1564
1565 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1566
1567 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1568 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1569 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1570
1571 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1572 respectively.
1573
1574 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1575 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1576
1577 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1578 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1579 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1580
1581 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1582 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1583 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1584 is currently displayed in some window.
1585
1586 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1587 argument function's results.
1588
1589 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1590 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1591
1592 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1593 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1594
1595 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1596 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1597
1598 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1599 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1600 as follows:
1601
1602 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1603 nil don't display a cursor
1604 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1605 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1606 others display a box cursor.
1607
1608 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1609 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1610 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1611 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1612
1613 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1614 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1615 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1616 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1617
1618 Example:
1619
1620 (string-to-syntax "()")
1621 => (4 . 41)
1622
1623 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1624 other than 10.
1625
1626 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1627 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1628
1629 #b1111
1630 => 15
1631 #b-1111
1632 => -15
1633
1634 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1635
1636 #o666
1637 => 438
1638
1639 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1640
1641 #xbeef
1642 => 48815
1643
1644 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1645
1646 #2R-111
1647 => -7
1648 #25rah
1649 => 267
1650
1651 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1652 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1653 and isn't a string.
1654
1655 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1656 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1657 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1658 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1659
1660 +++
1661 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1662
1663 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1664 for a regexp in a string.
1665
1666 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1667 `mouse-position-function'.
1668
1669 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1670 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1671
1672 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1673 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1674
1675 +++
1676 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1677 returns it.
1678
1679 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1680 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1681
1682 +++
1683 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1684 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1685 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1686 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1687 mode.
1688
1689 +++
1690 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1691 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1692
1693 +++
1694 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1695 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1696 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1697 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1698 been performed."
1699
1700 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1701 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1702 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1703 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1704
1705 +++
1706 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1707 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1708 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1709
1710 +++
1711 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1712 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1713 specified table.
1714
1715 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1716
1717 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1718 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1719 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1720 what BODY returns.
1721
1722 +++
1723 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1724 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1725
1726 +++
1727 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1728 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1729
1730 +++
1731 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1732 instead of being optional.
1733
1734 +++
1735 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1736 modify read-only text.
1737
1738 +++
1739 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1740
1741 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1742 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1743 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1744 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1745 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1746
1747 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1748 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1749 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1750 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1751 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1752 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1753 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1754
1755 +++
1756 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1757 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1758 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1759 start sequences.
1760
1761 +++
1762 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1763 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1764
1765 +++
1766 ** New function `propertize'
1767
1768 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1769 strings with text properties.
1770
1771 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1772
1773 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1774 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1775 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1776 specified value of that property. Example:
1777
1778 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1779
1780 +++
1781 ** push and pop macros.
1782
1783 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1784 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1785 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1786
1787 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1788 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1789 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1790
1791 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1792
1793 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1794 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1795
1796 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1797 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1798 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1799 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1800
1801 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1802 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1803 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1804 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1805
1806 +++
1807 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1808 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1809
1810 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1811 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1812 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1813 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1814 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1815 space, and DEL.
1816 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1817 and DEL.
1818 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1819 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1820 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1821 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1822 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1823 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1824 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1825 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1826 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1827 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1828 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1829 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1830 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1831 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1832 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1833
1834 +++
1835 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1836
1837 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1838
1839 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1840
1841 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1842 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1843
1844 :test TEST
1845
1846 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1847 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1848 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1849
1850 :size SIZE
1851
1852 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1853 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1854
1855 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1856
1857 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1858 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1859 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1860 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1861 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1862
1863 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1864
1865 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1866 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1867 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1868
1869 :weakness WEAK
1870
1871 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
1872 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
1873 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
1874 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
1875 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1876
1877 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1878
1879 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1880
1881 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1882
1883 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1884
1885 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1886
1887 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1888 values are shared.
1889
1890 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1891
1892 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1893
1894 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1895
1896 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1897
1898 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1899
1900 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1901
1902 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1903
1904 Returns the size of TABLE.
1905
1906 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1907
1908 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1909
1910 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1911
1912 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1913
1914 - Function: clrhash TABLE
1915
1916 Clear TABLE.
1917
1918 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1919
1920 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1921 not found.
1922
1923 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
1924
1925 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1926 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1927
1928 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1929
1930 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1931
1932 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1933
1934 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1935 arguments KEY and VALUE.
1936
1937 - Function: sxhash OBJ
1938
1939 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1940
1941 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1942
1943 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1944 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
1945 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
1946 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1947 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1948
1949 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1950
1951 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1952 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1953 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1954
1955 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1956 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1957
1958 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1959 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1960
1961 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1962 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1963
1964 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
1965 'case-fold-string-hash))
1966
1967 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1968
1969 +++
1970 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1971
1972 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1973 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1974 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1975
1976 +++
1977 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1978
1979 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1980 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1981
1982 +++
1983 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
1984 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
1985 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
1986 is too short to reach that column.
1987
1988 +++
1989 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
1990 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
1991 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
1992 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
1993
1994 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
1995 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
1996 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
1997
1998 +++
1999 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2000 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2001
2002 +++
2003 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2004 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2005
2006 +++
2007 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2008 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2009 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2010 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2011 temporary-file-directory instead.
2012
2013 +++
2014 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2015 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2016 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2017 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2018
2019 +++
2020 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2021 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2022
2023 +++
2024 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2025
2026 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2027 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2028 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2029
2030 +++
2031 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2032
2033 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2034 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2035 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2036 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2037 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2038 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2039
2040 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2041 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2042 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2043 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2044
2045 +++
2046 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2047
2048 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2049 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2050 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2051 result string.
2052
2053 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2054 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2055
2056 Example:
2057
2058 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2059 (s2 "world"))
2060 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2061 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2062 (format s1 s2))
2063
2064 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2065
2066 +++
2067 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2068
2069 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2070 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2071 argument in it.
2072
2073 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2074 (arg "world"))
2075 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2076 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2077 (message msg arg))
2078
2079 +++
2080 ** Sound support
2081
2082 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2083 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2084
2085 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2086 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2087 to enable sound support.
2088
2089 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2090 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2091 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2092 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2093 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2094
2095 The following sound properties are supported:
2096
2097 - `:file FILE'
2098
2099 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2100 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2101
2102 - `:data DATA'
2103
2104 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2105 may be present, but not both.
2106
2107 - `:volume VOLUME'
2108
2109 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2110 0..1. This property is optional.
2111
2112 Other properties are ignored.
2113
2114 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2115
2116 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2117 a keyword symbol.
2118
2119 ** Changes to garbage collection
2120
2121 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2122 of live and free strings.
2123
2124 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2125 strings that have been consed so far.
2126
2127 \f
2128 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2129 Lisp Manual
2130
2131 +++
2132 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2133
2134 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2135 image.
2136
2137 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2138
2139 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2140
2141 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2142 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2143 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2144 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2145 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2146
2147 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2148 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2149
2150 +++
2151 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2152 optional.
2153
2154 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2155
2156 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2157 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2158 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2159 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2160
2161 \f
2162 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2163
2164 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2165 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2166 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2167 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2168
2169 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2170 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2171
2172 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2173 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2174 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2175 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2176 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2177 just display it black instead.
2178
2179 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2180 a line like
2181
2182 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2183
2184 in your `.emacs'.
2185
2186 ** New face implementation.
2187
2188 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2189 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2190
2191 +++
2192 *** New faces.
2193
2194 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2195
2196 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2197
2198 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2199 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2200
2201 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2202
2203 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2204
2205 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2206
2207 6. Foreground color.
2208
2209 7. Background color.
2210
2211 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2212
2213 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2214
2215 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2216
2217 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2218
2219 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2220 color.
2221
2222 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2223 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2224
2225 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2226 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2227 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2228 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2229 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2230 attributes mentioned above.
2231
2232 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2233 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2234 created frames.
2235
2236 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2237 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2238 `fully-specified'.
2239
2240 +++
2241 *** Face merging.
2242
2243 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2244 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2245 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2246 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2247 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2248 results in a fully-specified face.
2249
2250 +++
2251 *** Face realization.
2252
2253 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2254 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2255 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2256 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2257 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2258 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2259
2260 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2261 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2262 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2263 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2264
2265 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2266 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2267 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2268 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2269 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2270
2271 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2272 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2273 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2274 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2275 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2276 Emacs.
2277
2278 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2279 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2280 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2281 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2282
2283 ++++
2284 **** Clearing face caches.
2285
2286 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2287 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2288 unused fonts.
2289
2290 +++
2291 *** Font selection.
2292
2293 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2294 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2295 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2296
2297 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2298 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2299 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2300 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2301 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2302
2303 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2304 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2305 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2306
2307 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2308
2309 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2310 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2311 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2312 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2313 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2314 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2315 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2316
2317 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2318 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2319 face doesn't exist.
2320
2321 +++
2322 **** Scalable fonts
2323
2324 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2325 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2326 servers.
2327
2328 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2329 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2330 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2331 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2332 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2333 that list. Example:
2334
2335 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2336
2337 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2338
2339 +++
2340 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2341
2342 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2343
2344 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2345 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2346 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2347
2348 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2349 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2350 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2351 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2352 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2353 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2354 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2355 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2356 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2357 of the face font sort order.
2358
2359 - Function: x-font-family-list
2360
2361 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2362 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2363 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2364 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2365
2366 - Variable: font-list-limit
2367
2368 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2369 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2370 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2371
2372 +++
2373 *** Setting face attributes.
2374
2375 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2376 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2377 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2378 `face-attribute'.
2379
2380 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2381 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2382
2383 The following attributes are recognized:
2384
2385 `:family'
2386
2387 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2388 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2389 and `?' are allowed.
2390
2391 `:width'
2392
2393 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2394 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2395 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2396 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2397
2398 `:height'
2399
2400 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2401 1/10 pt.
2402
2403 `:weight'
2404
2405 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2406 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2407 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2408
2409 `:slant'
2410
2411 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2412 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2413 `reverse-oblique'.
2414
2415 `:foreground', `:background'
2416
2417 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2418
2419 `:underline'
2420
2421 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2422 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2423 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2424 don't underline.
2425
2426 `:overline'
2427
2428 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2429 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2430 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2431 overline.
2432
2433 `:strike-through'
2434
2435 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2436 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2437 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2438 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2439
2440 `:box'
2441
2442 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2443 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2444 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2445 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2446 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2447 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2448 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2449 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2450 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2451 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2452 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2453 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2454 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2455 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2456 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2457 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2458 box.
2459
2460 `:inverse-video'
2461
2462 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2463 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2464
2465 `:stipple'
2466
2467 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2468 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2469 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2470 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2471 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2472 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2473
2474 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2475 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2476
2477 `:font'
2478
2479 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2480 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2481 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2482 versions of Emacs.
2483
2484 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2485 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2486 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2487
2488 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2489 `defface'.
2490
2491 *** Face attributes and X resources
2492
2493 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2494 from X resources:
2495
2496 Face attribute X resource class
2497 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2498 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2499 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2500 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2501 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2502 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2503 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2504 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2505 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2506 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2507 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2508 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2509 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2510 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2511 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2512 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2513 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2514 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2515 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2516 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2517
2518 +++
2519 *** Text property `face'.
2520
2521 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2522 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2523 specification can be
2524
2525 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2526
2527 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2528 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2529 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2530 for face attribute names.
2531
2532 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2533 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2534 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2535
2536 +++
2537 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2538
2539 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2540 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2541 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2542 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2543 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2544 used to clear the mapping table.
2545
2546 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2547
2548 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2549 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2550 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2551 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2552 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2553 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2554 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2555 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2556 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2557 modify their color-related behavior.
2558
2559 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2560 any frame type.
2561
2562 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2563
2564 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2565 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2566 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2567 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2568 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2569 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2570 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2571 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2572 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2573
2574 +++
2575 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2576
2577 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2578
2579 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2580 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2581 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2582
2583 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2584
2585 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2586 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2587 text-property.
2588
2589 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2590 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2591 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2592 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2593 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2594 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2595 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2596 functions.
2597
2598 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2599 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2600 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2601
2602 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2603
2604 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
2605
2606 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2607 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2608 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2609 constrained position if that is is different.
2610
2611 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2612 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2613 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2614 constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
2615 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2616 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2617 fields.
2618
2619 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2620 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2621 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2622 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2623 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2624
2625 - Function: erase-field &optional POS
2626
2627 Erases the field surrounding POS.
2628 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2629 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2630
2631 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2632
2633 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2634 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2635 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2636 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
2637 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2638
2639 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2640
2641 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2642 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2643 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2644 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
2645 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2646
2647 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2648
2649 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2650 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2651 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2652
2653 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2654
2655 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2656 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2657 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2658
2659 +++
2660 ** Image support.
2661
2662 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2663 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2664 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2665 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2666
2667 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2668 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2669 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2670 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2671 area.
2672
2673 IMAGE is an image specification.
2674
2675 *** Image specifications
2676
2677 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2678 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2679 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2680 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2681 described below are ignored.
2682
2683 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2684
2685 `:ascent ASCENT'
2686
2687 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2688 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2689 to use for its ascent.
2690
2691 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2692 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2693
2694 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2695 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2696 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2697 overlays that apply to the image.
2698
2699 `:margin MARGIN'
2700
2701 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2702 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2703
2704 `:relief RELIEF'
2705
2706 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2707 around an image.
2708
2709 `:algorithm ALGO'
2710
2711 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2712 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2713 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2714 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2715
2716 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2717
2718 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2719 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2720 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2721 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2722 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2723 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2724 background of the image.
2725
2726 `:file FILE'
2727
2728 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2729 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2730 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2731 may be present in the image specification.
2732
2733 `:data DATA'
2734
2735 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2736 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2737 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2738 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2739
2740 *** Supported image types
2741
2742 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2743
2744 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2745 properties supported are
2746
2747 `:foreground FG'
2748
2749 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2750 is the frame's foreground.
2751
2752 `:background FG'
2753
2754 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2755 the frame's background color.
2756
2757 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2758 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2759 instead of a `:file' property.
2760
2761 `:width WIDTH'
2762
2763 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2764
2765 `:height HEIGHT'
2766
2767 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2768
2769 `:data DATA'
2770
2771 DATA must be either
2772
2773 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2774 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2775
2776 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2777
2778 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2779 bitmap.
2780
2781 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2782 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2783 in the file.
2784
2785 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2786
2787 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2788 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2789 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2790 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2791
2792 Additional image properties supported are:
2793
2794 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2795
2796 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2797 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2798 name.
2799
2800 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2801 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2802
2803 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2804 to display compressed images.
2805
2806 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2807
2808 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2809 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2810 defined.
2811
2812 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2813
2814 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2815 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2816 are:
2817
2818 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2819
2820 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2821 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2822 properties defined.
2823
2824 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2825
2826 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2827 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2828
2829 Additional image properties supported are:
2830
2831 `:index INDEX'
2832
2833 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2834 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2835
2836 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2837 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2838 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2839 every 0.1 seconds.
2840
2841 (defun show-anim (file max)
2842 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2843 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2844
2845 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2846 (when (= idx max)
2847 (setq idx 0))
2848 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2849 (save-excursion
2850 (set-buffer buffer)
2851 (goto-char (point-min))
2852 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2853 (insert-image img "x"))
2854 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2855
2856 **** PNG, image type `png'
2857
2858 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2859 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2860 properties defined.
2861
2862 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2863
2864 Additional image properties supported are:
2865
2866 `:pt-width WIDTH'
2867
2868 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2869 integer. This is a required property.
2870
2871 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
2872
2873 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2874 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2875
2876 `:bounding-box BOX'
2877
2878 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2879 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2880 files. This is an required property.
2881
2882 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2883 lisp/gs.el.
2884
2885 *** Lisp interface.
2886
2887 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2888 which are supported in the current configuration.
2889
2890 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2891 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2892 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2893 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
2894 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
2895
2896 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2897
2898 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2899 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2900 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2901 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2902 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2903 buffer.
2904
2905 +++
2906 ** Display margins.
2907
2908 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2909 and images.
2910
2911 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2912 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2913 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2914 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2915 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2916 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2917 of the display margins.
2918
2919 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2920 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2921 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2922 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2923 in this file).
2924
2925 +++
2926 ** Help display
2927
2928 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2929 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2930 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2931 that have a `help-echo' property.
2932
2933 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
2934 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
2935 the window in which the help was found.
2936
2937 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
2938 `help-echo' text property was found.
2939
2940 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
2941 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
2942
2943 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
2944 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
2945 mouse.
2946
2947 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
2948 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
2949
2950 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
2951 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
2952 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
2953 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
2954 used as help string.
2955
2956 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
2957 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
2958 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
2959
2960 +++
2961 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
2962
2963 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
2964 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
2965
2966 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
2967 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
2968 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
2969 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
2970 used.
2971
2972 (global-set-key [A-down]
2973 #'(lambda ()
2974 (interactive)
2975 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2976 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
2977 (global-set-key [A-up]
2978 #'(lambda ()
2979 (interactive)
2980 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2981 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
2982
2983 +++
2984 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
2985
2986 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
2987 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
2988 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
2989 is called with one argument, POS.
2990
2991 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
2992 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
2993 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
2994 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
2995 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
2996
2997 +++
2998 ** Tool bar support.
2999
3000 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3001 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3002 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3003 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3004 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3005 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3006
3007 *** Tool bar item definitions
3008
3009 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3010 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3011 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3012
3013 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3014 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3015 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3016 property (see below).
3017
3018 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3019 binding are currently ignored.
3020
3021 The following properties are recognized:
3022
3023 `:enable FORM'.
3024
3025 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3026 or disabled.
3027
3028 `:visible FORM'
3029
3030 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3031
3032 `:filter FUNCTION'
3033
3034 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3035 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3036 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3037
3038 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3039
3040 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3041 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3042
3043 `:image IMAGES'
3044
3045 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3046 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3047 meaning of each of the four elements:
3048
3049 Index Use when item is
3050 ----------------------------------------
3051 0 enabled and selected
3052 1 enabled and deselected
3053 2 disabled and selected
3054 3 disabled and deselected
3055
3056 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3057 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3058
3059 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3060
3061 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3062 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3063
3064 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3065
3066 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3067 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3068 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3069
3070 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3071 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3072
3073 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3074 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3075 pixels. Default is 1.
3076
3077 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3078 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3079
3080 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3081
3082 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3083 a tool bar item. If
3084
3085 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3086 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3087 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3088
3089 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3090
3091 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3092
3093 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3094 item.
3095
3096 ** Mode line changes.
3097
3098 +++
3099 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3100
3101 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3102 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3103 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3104
3105 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3106 a `local-map' text property.
3107
3108 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3109 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3110
3111 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3112 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3113 `local-map' property.
3114
3115 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3116 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3117 example.
3118
3119 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3120 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3121
3122 +++
3123 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3124 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3125
3126 +++
3127 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3128
3129 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3130 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3131 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3132 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3133 line.
3134
3135 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3136 `header-line'.
3137
3138 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3139 position in the header-line.
3140
3141 +++
3142 ** Text property `display'
3143
3144 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3145 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3146 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3147 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3148
3149 *** Variable width and height spaces
3150
3151 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3152 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3153 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3154 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3155 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3156 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3157 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3158
3159 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3160 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3161 properties described below.
3162
3163 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3164 characters having the `display' property.
3165
3166 - :width WIDTH
3167
3168 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3169 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3170
3171 - :relative-width FACTOR
3172
3173 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3174 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3175 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3176 width of that character by FACTOR.
3177
3178 - :align-to HPOS
3179
3180 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3181 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3182
3183 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3184
3185 - :height HEIGHT
3186
3187 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3188 normal line height.
3189
3190 - :relative-height FACTOR
3191
3192 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3193 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3194
3195 - :ascent ASCENT
3196
3197 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3198 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3199 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3200 equal to 100.
3201
3202 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3203
3204 *** Images
3205
3206 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3207 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3208 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3209 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3210 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3211 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3212 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3213 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3214 as display specification.
3215
3216 *** Other display properties
3217
3218 - :space-width FACTOR
3219
3220 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3221 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3222 integer or float.
3223
3224 - :height HEIGHT
3225
3226 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3227
3228 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3229 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3230 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3231 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3232 a font is available counts as a step.
3233
3234 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3235 as tall as the frame's default font.
3236
3237 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3238 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3239
3240 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3241 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3242
3243 - :raise FACTOR
3244
3245 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3246 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3247 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3248 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3249 `:height' subproperty.
3250
3251 *** Conditional display properties
3252
3253 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3254 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3255 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3256 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3257 the text having the `display' property.
3258
3259 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3260 `(:when t SPEC)'.
3261
3262 +++
3263 ** New menu separator types.
3264
3265 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3266 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3267 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3268 to specify other menu separator types.
3269
3270 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3271
3272 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3273 separator occurs.
3274
3275 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3276
3277 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3278
3279 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3280
3281 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3282
3283 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3284
3285 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3286
3287 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3288
3289 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3290
3291 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3292
3293 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3294 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3295
3296 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3297
3298 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3299
3300 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3301
3302 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3303
3304 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3305
3306 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3307
3308 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3309
3310 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3311
3312 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3313
3314 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3315
3316 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3317
3318 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3319
3320 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3321
3322 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3323
3324 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3325 the corresponding single-line separators.
3326
3327 +++
3328 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3329
3330 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3331 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3332 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3333 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3334 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3335 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3336 default foreground is black.
3337
3338 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3339 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3340 `ScrollBarBackground').
3341
3342 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3343 settings for scroll bar colors.
3344
3345 +++
3346 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3347 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3348
3349 ---
3350 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3351 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3352 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3353 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3354 the original window start.
3355
3356 ---
3357 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3358 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3359 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3360
3361 +++
3362 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3363
3364 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3365 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3366 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3367 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3368
3369 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3370 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3371
3372 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3373
3374 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3375 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3376 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3377 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3378 temporarily to nil, for example
3379
3380 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3381 (enlarge-window 10))
3382
3383 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3384 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3385
3386 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3387 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3388 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3389 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3390 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3391 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3392 ^L
3393 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3394
3395 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3396 input.
3397
3398 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3399
3400 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3401
3402 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3403 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3404 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3405 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3406 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3407
3408 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3409 been added.
3410
3411 ^L
3412 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3413
3414 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3415
3416 ^L
3417 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3418
3419 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3420 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3421 \f
3422 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3423
3424 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3425
3426 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3427 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3428 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3429
3430 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3431 is the one that is used.
3432
3433 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3434 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3435 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3436 separate from the command's regular output.
3437 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3438 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3439 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3440 the buffer name.
3441
3442 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3443 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3444 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3445 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3446
3447 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3448 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3449 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3450 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3451
3452 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3453 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3454 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3455 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3456
3457 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3458 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3459 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3460 they never ignore case.
3461
3462 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3463 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3464 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3465 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3466 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3467 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3468 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3469
3470 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3471 the same format that was used in the file before.
3472
3473 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3474 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3475
3476 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3477 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3478 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3479
3480 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3481 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3482 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3483 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3484 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3485 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3486 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3487
3488 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3489 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3490 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3491 format. You can now customize these variables.
3492
3493 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3494 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3495 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3496 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3497
3498 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3499 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3500 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3501
3502 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3503 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3504 doesn't have any effect.
3505
3506 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3507 not one per buffer.
3508
3509 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3510 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3511 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3512
3513 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3514 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3515 `auto-show-mode' command.
3516
3517 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3518 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3519 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3520 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3521 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3522
3523 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3524 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3525
3526 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3527 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3528 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3529
3530 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3531 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3532 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3533 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3534
3535 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3536
3537 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3538 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3539 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3540 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3541 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3542
3543 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3544 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3545
3546 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3547 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3548 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3549 `?' on other systems.
3550
3551 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3552 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3553 Unix.
3554
3555 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3556 current codepage when it starts.
3557
3558 ** Mail changes
3559
3560 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3561 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3562 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3563 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3564 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3565 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3566 latin-1:
3567
3568 MIME-version: 1.0
3569 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3570 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3571
3572 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3573 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3574 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3575 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3576 buffer-file-coding-system.
3577
3578 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3579 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3580 mail.
3581
3582 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3583 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3584 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3585 list of possible coding systems.
3586
3587 ** CC Mode changes
3588
3589 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3590 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3591 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3592 docstring for details.
3593
3594 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3595 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3596 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3597 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3598 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3599
3600 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3601 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3602
3603 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3604 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3605
3606 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3607 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3608 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3609 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3610 anonymous classes.
3611
3612 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3613 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3614
3615 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3616 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3617 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3618 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3619
3620 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3621 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3622 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3623 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3624 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3625
3626 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3627
3628 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3629
3630 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3631 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3632
3633 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3634
3635 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3636 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3637 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3638 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3639 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3640
3641 ** Gnus changes.
3642
3643 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3644 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3645 Gnus manual for the full story.
3646
3647 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3648 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3649 group, which is created automatically.
3650
3651 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3652 values.
3653
3654 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3655
3656 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3657 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3658
3659 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3660 `C-u C-c C-c'.
3661
3662 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3663
3664 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3665 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3666
3667 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3668
3669 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3670 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3671
3672 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3673 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3674
3675 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3676 control over simplification.
3677
3678 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3679
3680 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3681 limit.
3682
3683 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3684
3685 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3686
3687 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3688 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3689 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3690
3691 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3692 `a' forces normal posting method.
3693
3694 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3695 -- `W d'.
3696
3697 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3698 to a non-nil value.
3699
3700 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3701 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3702
3703 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3704 has been added.
3705
3706 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3707
3708 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3709
3710 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3711 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3712
3713 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3714 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3715
3716 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3717
3718 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3719 been added.
3720
3721 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3722 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3723
3724 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3725 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3726
3727 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3728
3729 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3730
3731 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3732
3733 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3734
3735 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3736 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3737 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3738
3739 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3740 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3741 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3742 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3743 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3744
3745 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3746 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3747 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3748 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3749
3750 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3751 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3752 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3753 mismatch.
3754
3755 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3756
3757 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3758 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3759
3760 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3761 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3762 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3763 removed from the label.
3764
3765 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3766 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3767
3768 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3769 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3770
3771 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3772 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3773 expressions.
3774
3775 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3776
3777 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3778
3779 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3780 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3781
3782 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3783 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3784 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3785
3786 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3787 changes with a special face.
3788
3789 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3790 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3791 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3792 \f
3793 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3794
3795 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3796 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3797 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3798 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3799 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3800
3801 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3802 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3803 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3804
3805 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3806 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3807 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3808 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3809 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3810 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3811 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3812 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3813 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3814
3815 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3816 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3817 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3818 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3819 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3820 program.
3821
3822 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3823 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3824 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3825 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3826 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3827 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3828
3829 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3830 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3831 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3832 was not documented clearly before.
3833
3834 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3835 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3836 \f
3837 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3838
3839 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3840 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3841 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3842 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3843
3844 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3845 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3846 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3847
3848 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3849
3850 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3851 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3852
3853 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3854 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3855 integers.
3856
3857 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3858 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3859 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3860 file names and attributes are returned.
3861
3862 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3863 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3864 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3865 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3866 returns the result.
3867
3868 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3869 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3870
3871 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3872
3873 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3874 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3875 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3876 optionally.
3877
3878 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3879 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3880
3881 **
3882 The new function process-running-child-p
3883 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3884 terminal to its own child process.
3885
3886 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3887 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3888 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3889 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3890
3891 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3892 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3893
3894 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3895 :included is an alias for :visible.
3896
3897 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3898 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3899 to move or copy menu entries.
3900
3901 ** Multibyte editing changes
3902
3903 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3904 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3905 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3906 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3907 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3908 (setq char (sref str idx)
3909 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3910 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3911
3912 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3913 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3914 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3915
3916 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3917 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3918 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3919
3920 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3921
3922 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3923 across the boundary.
3924
3925 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3926 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3927 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3928 contains 8-bit characters.
3929 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3930 contains invalid characters.
3931
3932 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3933 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3934 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3935 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3936 way.
3937
3938 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3939 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3940 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3941 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3942
3943 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3944 compose Thai characters in a string.
3945
3946 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3947 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3948 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
3949 menus should always use the third argument.
3950
3951 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
3952 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
3953 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
3954 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
3955
3956 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
3957 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
3958 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
3959 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
3960
3961 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
3962 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
3963 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
3964 echo area contents.
3965
3966 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
3967
3968 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
3969 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
3970 requested feature cannot be loaded.
3971
3972 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
3973 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
3974 means to clear out that attribute.
3975
3976 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
3977 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
3978
3979 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
3980 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
3981 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
3982 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
3983
3984 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
3985 the gap of the current buffer.
3986
3987 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
3988 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
3989 current buffer.
3990
3991 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
3992 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
3993 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
3994 it back in after any modifications have been made.
3995 \f
3996 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
3997
3998 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
3999 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4000 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4001 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4002 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4003
4004 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4005 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4006 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4007 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4008 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4009
4010 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4011 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4012 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4013
4014 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4015 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4016 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4017 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4018 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4019 results.
4020
4021 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4022 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4023 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4024 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4025 \f
4026 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4027
4028 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4029 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4030 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4031 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4032
4033 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4034 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4035 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4036 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4037 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4038 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4039 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4040 region.
4041
4042 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4043 selective undo.
4044
4045 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4046 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4047 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4048 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4049 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4050
4051 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4052 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4053 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4054 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4055
4056 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4057 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4058 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4059 something that most users not do.
4060
4061 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4062 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4063 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4064 applications.
4065
4066 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4067 pasting operations.
4068
4069 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4070 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4071 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4072 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4073 `ps-printer-name'.
4074
4075 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4076 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4077 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4078 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4079 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4080 hits a new word.
4081
4082 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4083 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4084 to be confused by TeX commands.
4085
4086 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4087 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4088 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4089 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4090
4091 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4092 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4093 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4094 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4095 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4096
4097 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4098 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4099
4100 ** Changes in input method usage.
4101
4102 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4103 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4104 respectively.
4105
4106 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4107
4108 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4109 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4110
4111 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4112 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4113
4114 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4115
4116 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4117
4118 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4119 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4120
4121 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4122 given in the following case:
4123 o When you are using a complex input method.
4124 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4125
4126 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4127 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4128 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4129 setting it to t is helpful.
4130
4131 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4132
4133 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4134 keys:
4135 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4136 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4137 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4138 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4139 environment.
4140
4141 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4142 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4143 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4144 get
4145
4146 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4147
4148 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4149
4150 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4151 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4152
4153 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4154 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4155 its owner and group.
4156
4157 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4158 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4159
4160 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4161 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4162
4163 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4164 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4165 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4166 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4167
4168 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4169 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4170 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4171 for writing keyboard macros.
4172
4173 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4174 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4175 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4176 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4177 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4178 info.
4179
4180 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4181
4182 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4183 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4184 contents only.
4185
4186 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4187 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4188 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4189 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4190
4191 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4192 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4193 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4194
4195 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4196 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4197 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4198 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4199
4200 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4201 failure if the command produces no output.
4202
4203 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4204 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4205 the mouse.
4206
4207 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4208 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4209 function and variable names.
4210
4211 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4212 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4213 file-coding-system-alist.
4214
4215 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4216 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4217 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4218 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4219 according to the current fontset.
4220
4221 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4222
4223 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4224 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4225 nonascii-insert-offset.
4226
4227 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4228 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4229 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4230 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4231
4232 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4233 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4234
4235 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4236 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4237
4238 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4239 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4240 command keys.
4241
4242 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4243 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4244
4245 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4246 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4247 all variables that have documentation.
4248
4249 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4250 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4251 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4252 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4253 it should show; the default is 20.
4254
4255 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4256 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4257 of your input.
4258
4259 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4260 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4261 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4262 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4263 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4264 Newly added options are included as well.
4265
4266 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4267 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4268 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4269
4270 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4271 Customize menu.
4272
4273 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4274 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4275
4276 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4277 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4278 invoked.
4279
4280 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4281 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4282 The default is 1.
4283
4284 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4285 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4286 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4287 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4288 sensibly.
4289
4290 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4291
4292 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4293 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4294 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4295
4296 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4297 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4298 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4299 every night.
4300
4301 ** Desktop changes
4302
4303 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4304 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4305
4306 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4307 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4308
4309 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4310 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4311
4312 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4313 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4314 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4315 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4316 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4317 made invisible again.
4318
4319 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4320
4321 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4322 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4323 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4324 toggle.
4325
4326 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4327 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4328 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4329 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4330 rmail-default-body-file.
4331
4332 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4333 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4334 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4335
4336 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4337 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4338 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4339
4340 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4341 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4342 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4343 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4344 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4345 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4346
4347 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4348 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4349 provided by feedmail are:
4350
4351 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4352 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4353 there is also a queue for draft messages
4354
4355 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4356 be prompted for confirmation
4357
4358 **** does smart filling of address headers
4359
4360 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4361 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4362 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4363
4364 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4365 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4366 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4367 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4368
4369 ** Dired changes
4370
4371 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4372 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4373
4374 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4375 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4376
4377 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4378 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4379 for a specified regexp.
4380
4381 ** VC Changes
4382
4383 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4384 conveniently.
4385
4386 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4387 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4388 Dired.
4389
4390 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4391 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4392 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4393 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4394
4395 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4396 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4397 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4398 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4399 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4400
4401 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4402 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4403 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4404 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4405 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4406
4407 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4408 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4409 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4410 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4411
4412 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4413 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4414 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4415
4416 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4417 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4418 session to resolve them.
4419
4420 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4421 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4422 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4423 uses as well).
4424
4425 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4426 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4427 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4428 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4429 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4430 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4431 using ediff.
4432
4433 ** Changes in Font Lock
4434
4435 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4436 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4437 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4438 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4439 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4440
4441 ** Frame name display changes
4442
4443 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4444 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4445 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4446 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4447
4448 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4449 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4450 menu.
4451
4452 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4453
4454 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4455 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4456 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4457
4458 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4459
4460 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4461 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4462 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4463
4464 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4465 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4466 the following line.
4467
4468 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4469 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4470 previously sent input.
4471
4472 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4473 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4474 as the search string.
4475
4476 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4477 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4478
4479 ** C mode changes
4480
4481 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4482 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4483 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4484 definition.
4485
4486 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4487 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4488 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4489 style is still the default however.
4490
4491 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4492
4493 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4494 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4495 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4496
4497 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4498 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4499
4500 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4501 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4502
4503 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4504 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4505
4506 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4507 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4508
4509 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4510 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4511 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4512 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4513
4514 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4515
4516 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4517 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4518 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4519
4520 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4521 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4522 expanding dynamically.
4523
4524 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4525 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4526
4527 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4528 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4529 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4530 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4531
4532 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4533
4534 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4535
4536 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4537 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4538 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4539 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4540 against the first word in the title.
4541
4542 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4543 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4544 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4545 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4546 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4547 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4548
4549 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4550 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4551 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4552 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4553
4554 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4555
4556 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4557 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4558 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4559 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4560 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4561 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4562
4563 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4564 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4565
4566 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4567 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4568 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4569
4570 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4571 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4572
4573 ** Ispell changes.
4574
4575 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4576 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4577 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4578
4579 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4580 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4581 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4582 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4583 include:
4584
4585 o URLs are automatically skipped
4586 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4587
4588 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4589
4590 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4591
4592 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4593 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4594 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4595 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4596
4597 *** New recursive parser.
4598
4599 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4600 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4601 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4602
4603 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4604
4605 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4606 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4607 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4608
4609 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4610
4611 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4612
4613 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4614
4615 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4616
4617 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4618
4619 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4620 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4621
4622 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4623
4624 *** References to external documents.
4625
4626 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4627 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4628 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4629 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4630 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4631 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4632 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4633
4634 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4635
4636 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4637 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4638
4639 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4640 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4641
4642 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4643
4644 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4645 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4646
4647 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4648
4649 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4650 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4651 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4652 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4653 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4654 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4655 more.
4656
4657 *** Support for the varioref package
4658
4659 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4660
4661 *** New hooks
4662
4663 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4664 and citations are created. These hooks are
4665 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4666 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4667
4668 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4669
4670 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4671 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4672
4673 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4674
4675 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4676 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4677 fontified, use
4678
4679 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4680
4681 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4682 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4683 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4684 directories that contain the same file name.
4685
4686 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4687 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4688 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4689 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4690 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4691 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4692 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4693 directory.
4694
4695 ** New modes and packages
4696
4697 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4698 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4699 it, but some do not.
4700
4701 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4702 code.
4703
4704 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4705 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4706 around in a buffer.
4707
4708 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4709
4710 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4711 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4712 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4713 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4714
4715 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4716 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4717 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4718
4719 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4720 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4721 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4722 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4723 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4724 the like.
4725
4726 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4727 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4728
4729 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4730 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4731 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4732 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4733
4734 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4735
4736 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4737 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4738 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4739 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4740 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4741 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4742 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4743 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4744 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4745 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4746 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4747
4748 Platform-specific modes:
4749
4750 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4751 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4752 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4753 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4754 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4755 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4756 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4757 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4758 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4759 \f
4760 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4761
4762 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4763 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4764 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4765 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4766
4767 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4768 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4769 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4770
4771 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4772 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4773 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4774 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4775
4776 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4777 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4778 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4779 environment.
4780
4781 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4782 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4783 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4784 current input method for reading this one event.
4785
4786 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4787 now control whether to output certain characters as
4788 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4789 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4790 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4791 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4792 \f
4793 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4794
4795 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4796 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4797
4798 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4799 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4800 always increases point by 1.
4801
4802 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4803 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4804
4805 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4806
4807 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4808 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4809 default value changed. For example,
4810
4811 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4812 :type 'integer
4813 :group 'foo
4814 :version "20.3")
4815
4816 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4817 :version "20.3")
4818
4819 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4820 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4821 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4822 `:version' in the top level group.
4823
4824 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4825
4826 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4827 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4828
4829 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4830 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4831 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4832 to themselves.
4833
4834 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4835 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4836 values whatever.
4837
4838 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4839 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4840 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4841
4842 ** Frame-local variables.
4843
4844 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4845 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4846 local bindings for that variable.
4847
4848 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4849 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4850 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4851 parameter name.
4852
4853 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4854 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4855 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4856 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4857
4858 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4859 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4860 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4861 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4862
4863 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4864 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4865 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4866 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4867 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4868
4869 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4870 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4871 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4872 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4873
4874 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4875 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4876
4877 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4878 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4879 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4880
4881 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4882 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4883 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4884 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4885
4886 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4887 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4888 empty input.
4889
4890 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4891 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4892 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4893 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4894 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4895
4896 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4897 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4898 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4899 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4900
4901 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4902 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4903 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4904 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4905 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4906
4907 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4908 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4909 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4910 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4911
4912 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4913 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4914 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4915
4916 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4917 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4918 was directed to display this buffer.
4919
4920 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4921 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4922 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4923 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4924 set-window-configuration.
4925
4926 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4927 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4928 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4929 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4930
4931 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4932 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4933 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4934
4935 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4936 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4937 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4938
4939 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4940 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4941
4942 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4943 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4944
4945 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4946 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4947 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4948
4949 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
4950 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
4951 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
4952 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
4953
4954 ** Menu changes
4955
4956 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
4957 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
4958 better supported.
4959
4960 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
4961 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
4962 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
4963 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
4964 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
4965
4966 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
4967
4968 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
4969 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
4970 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
4971 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
4972
4973 The format is:
4974 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
4975 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
4976 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
4977 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
4978 The supported properties include
4979
4980 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4981 item is enabled.
4982 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4983 item should appear in the menu.
4984 :filter FILTER-FN
4985 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
4986 which will be REAL-BINDING.
4987 It should return a binding to use instead.
4988 :keys DESCRIPTION
4989 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
4990 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
4991 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
4992 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
4993 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
4994 keyboard binding.
4995 :key-sequence nil
4996 This means that the command normally has no
4997 keyboard equivalent.
4998 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
4999 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5000 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5001 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5002 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5003
5004 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5005 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5006
5007 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5008
5009 ** New event types
5010
5011 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5012 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5013 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5014 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5015
5016 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5017
5018 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5019 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5020 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5021 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5022 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5023 forward, away from the user.
5024
5025 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5026
5027 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5028 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5029 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5030 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5031 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5032
5033 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5034
5035 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5036 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5037 that were dragged and dropped.
5038
5039 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5040
5041 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5042
5043 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5044 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5045 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5046
5047 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5048 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5049 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5050
5051 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5052 in Emacs 19 and before.
5053
5054 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5055 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5056
5057 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5058 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5059 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5060 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5061
5062 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5063 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5064 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5065 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5066 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5067
5068 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5069 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5070 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5071 consistent with the new representation.
5072
5073 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5074 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5075 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5076 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5077
5078 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5079 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5080 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5081
5082 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5083 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5084 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5085
5086 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5087 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5088 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5089
5090 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5091 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5092
5093 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5094 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5095
5096 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5097 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5098 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5099 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5100
5101 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5102 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5103
5104 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5105 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5106 buffer or string being searched.
5107
5108 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5109 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5110 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5111 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5112 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5113 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5114 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5115
5116 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5117
5118 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5119 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5120 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5121 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5122 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5123 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5124 define-coding-system-alias.
5125
5126 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5127 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5128 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5129 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5130 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5131 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5132 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5133 `iso-8859-1'.
5134
5135 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5136 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5137 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5138 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5139
5140 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5141 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5142 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5143 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5144
5145 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5146 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5147 This function requires a user interaction.
5148
5149 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5150 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5151 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5152 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5153 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5154 select-safe-coding-system.
5155
5156 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5157 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5158 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5159 was done.
5160
5161 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5162 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5163 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5164
5165 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5166 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5167 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5168 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5169
5170 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5171 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5172 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5173 converted.
5174
5175 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5176 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5177
5178 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5179 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5180 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5181 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5182 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5183 range of characters.
5184
5185 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5186 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5187
5188 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5189 in the current buffer at position POS.
5190
5191 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5192 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5193 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5194 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5195 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5196 binding input-method-function to nil.
5197
5198 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5199 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5200 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5201 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5202 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5203
5204 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5205 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5206
5207 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5208 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5209
5210 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5211 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5212 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5213 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5214 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5215 \f
5216 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5217
5218 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5219 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5220 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5221 tree structure.
5222
5223 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5224 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5225
5226 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5227 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5228 in your .emacs file.)
5229
5230 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5231 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5232
5233 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5234 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5235
5236 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5237 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5238 kills the region.
5239
5240 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5241 delete the character before point, as usual.
5242
5243 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5244 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5245 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5246
5247 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5248 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5249 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5250 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5251 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5252 past.)
5253
5254 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5255 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5256 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5257 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5258 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5259
5260 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5261 and is an alias for it.
5262
5263 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5264 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5265
5266 ** Scrolling changes
5267
5268 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5269 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5270
5271 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5272 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5273 where it started.
5274
5275 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5276 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5277 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5278 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5279
5280 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5281 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5282 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5283 recenters the window.
5284
5285 ** International character set support (MULE)
5286
5287 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5288 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5289 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5290 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5291 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5292 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5293
5294 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5295 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5296 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5297 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5298 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5299
5300 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5301 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5302 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5303 language, to make it possible to type them.
5304
5305 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5306 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5307
5308 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5309 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5310
5311 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5312
5313 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5314
5315 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5316 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5317 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5318 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5319 characters for their work until they want to change.
5320
5321 *** Input methods
5322
5323 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5324 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5325 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5326 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5327 support several input methods.
5328
5329 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5330 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5331 work.
5332
5333 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5334 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5335 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5336 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5337 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5338 letter.
5339
5340 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5341 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5342 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5343 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5344 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5345
5346 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5347 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5348 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5349 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5350
5351 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5352 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5353 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5354 the first guess is wrong.
5355
5356 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5357 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5358
5359 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5360 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5361 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5362 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5363
5364 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5365 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5366 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5367 translate automatically to and from either one.
5368
5369 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5370
5371 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5372 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5373 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5374 what you want.
5375
5376 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5377 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5378 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5379 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5380
5381 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5382 character conversion as well.
5383
5384 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5385
5386 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5387 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5388 requires using many fonts.
5389
5390 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5391 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5392
5393 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5394 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5395 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5396 you would use a font.
5397
5398 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5399 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5400 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5401
5402 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5403 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5404 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5405 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5406 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5407
5408 *** Defining fontsets.
5409
5410 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5411 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5412 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5413
5414 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5415 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5416 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5417 standard fontset are created automatically.
5418
5419 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5420 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5421 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5422 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5423 name is `fontset-startup'.
5424
5425 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5426 The resource value should have this form:
5427 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5428 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5429 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5430 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5431 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5432 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5433 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5434 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5435 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5436
5437 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5438 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5439 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5440
5441 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5442 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5443 following resource,
5444 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5445 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5446 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5447 Here is the substitution rule:
5448 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5449 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5450 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5451 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5452 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5453
5454 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5455 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5456 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5457
5458 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5459 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5460 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5461 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5462 fontsets.
5463
5464 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5465 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5466
5467 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5468 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5469 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5470 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5471 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5472 system for new files that you create.
5473
5474 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5475 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5476 whole Emacs session.
5477
5478 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5479 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5480 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5481
5482 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5483 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5484 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5485 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5486 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5487
5488 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5489 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5490 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5491 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5492 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5493
5494 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5495 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5496
5497 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5498 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5499
5500 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5501 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5502
5503 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5504 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5505 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5506 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5507 of the file.
5508
5509 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5510 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5511 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5512 translated into that character code.
5513
5514 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5515 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5516
5517 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5518
5519 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5520 the coding system for keyboard input.
5521
5522 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5523 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5524 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5525
5526 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5527
5528 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5529 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5530 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5531 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5532 designed to work with terminals.
5533
5534 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5535 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5536 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5537 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5538 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5539 in the corresponding buffer.
5540
5541 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5542
5543 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5544 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5545 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5546
5547 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5548 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5549 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5550 want to use.
5551
5552 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5553 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5554
5555 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5556 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5557 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5558 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5559
5560 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5561 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5562 related information.
5563
5564 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5565 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5566 scripts.
5567
5568 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5569 information about the support for a particular language.
5570 You specify the language as an argument.
5571
5572 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5573 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5574 first dash.
5575
5576 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5577 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5578 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5579 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5580
5581 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5582 B big5 (Chinese)
5583 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5584 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5585 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5586 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5587 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5588 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5589 K euc-korea (Korean)
5590 R koi8 (Russian)
5591 Q tibetan
5592 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5593 T lao
5594 T tis620 (Thai)
5595 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5596 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5597 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5598 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5599 z hz (Chinese)
5600
5601 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5602 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5603 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5604 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5605
5606 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5607 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5608
5609 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5610 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5611 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5612 Rmail files themselves.
5613
5614 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5615 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5616
5617 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5618 for sending mail:
5619
5620 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5621 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5622 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5623 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5624 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5625
5626 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5627 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5628 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5629 translations.
5630
5631 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5632 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5633 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5634 without any conversion.
5635
5636 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5637 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5638 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5639 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5640
5641 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5642 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5643
5644 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5645 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5646
5647 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5648 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5649
5650 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5651 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5652 in the buffer before point.
5653
5654 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5655 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5656 you are using.
5657
5658 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5659 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5660
5661 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5662
5663 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5664 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5665
5666 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5667 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5668 can become a bottleneck.
5669
5670 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5671 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5672 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5673 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5674 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5675 so useful that the change is worth while.
5676
5677 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5678 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5679 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5680 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5681
5682 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5683 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5684 show-paren-mode.
5685
5686 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5687 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5688 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5689
5690 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5691 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5692 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5693
5694 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5695 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5696 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5697
5698 ** Changes in View mode.
5699
5700 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5701 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5702
5703 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5704 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5705
5706 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5707 previous state.
5708
5709 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5710 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5711
5712 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5713 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5714 not just the selected window.
5715
5716 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5717 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5718 turns View mode on or off.
5719
5720 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5721 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5722 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5723
5724 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5725 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5726
5727 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5728 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5729 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5730 which version to compare with.
5731
5732 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5733 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5734
5735 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5736 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5737 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5738 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5739
5740 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5741 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5742 blocks, all of them or none.
5743
5744 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5745 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5746 confirmation first.
5747
5748 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5749 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5750 However, the mode will not be changed if
5751 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5752 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5753 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5754 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5755
5756 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5757
5758 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5759 these commands do not change the major mode.
5760
5761 ** M-x occur changes.
5762
5763 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5764 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5765
5766 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5767 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5768 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5769
5770 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5771 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5772 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5773 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5774 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5775
5776 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5777 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5778 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5779 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5780
5781 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5782 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5783 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5784
5785 ** Outline mode changes.
5786
5787 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5788
5789 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5790
5791 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5792 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5793 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5794 was already active.
5795
5796 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5797 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5798 get confused by it.
5799
5800 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5801 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5802
5803 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5804
5805 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5806 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5807 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5808 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5809
5810 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5811 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5812 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5813
5814 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5815 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5816 values.
5817
5818 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5819 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5820 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5821 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5822
5823 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5824 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5825 can be. The default value is 30.
5826
5827 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5828
5829 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5830 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5831 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5832 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5833 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5834 behavior.
5835
5836 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5837 compose-mail-other-frame.
5838
5839 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5840 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5841 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5842 buffer that shows the original message.
5843
5844 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5845 with separator lines around the contents.
5846
5847 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5848 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5849 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5850 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5851
5852 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5853
5854 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5855 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5856 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5857 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5858
5859 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5860 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5861 /etc/passwd.
5862
5863 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5864 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5865 /etc/passwd.
5866
5867 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5868 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5869 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5870 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5871
5872 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5873 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5874 be taken to be magic.
5875
5876 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5877 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5878 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5879
5880 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5881 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5882
5883 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5884 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5885
5886 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5887
5888 new key dired.el binding old key
5889 ------- ---------------- -------
5890 * c dired-change-marks c
5891 * m dired-mark m
5892 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5893 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5894 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5895 * u dired-unmark u
5896 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5897 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5898 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5899 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5900 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5901 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5902
5903 ** Rmail changes.
5904
5905 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5906 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5907 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5908 each time you run it.
5909
5910 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5911 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5912
5913 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5914 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5915 means to move in the opposite direction.
5916
5917 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5918 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5919
5920 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5921 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5922 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5923 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5924 for output.
5925
5926 ** Gnus changes.
5927
5928 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5929
5930 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5931 Gnus.
5932
5933 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
5934 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5935
5936 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5937 article mode line.
5938
5939 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5940
5941 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5942
5943 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5944
5945 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5946 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5947 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5948
5949 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
5950
5951 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
5952
5953 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
5954 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
5955
5956 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
5957 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
5958 used to pick articles.
5959
5960 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
5961 another have been added.
5962
5963 `M-x gnus-change-server'
5964
5965 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
5966 generating lines in buffers.
5967
5968 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
5969 `M-C-_'.
5970
5971 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
5972
5973 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
5974
5975 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
5976
5977 *** Scores can be decayed.
5978
5979 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
5980
5981 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
5982 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
5983
5984 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
5985 the native server.
5986
5987 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
5988
5989 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
5990 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
5991
5992 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
5993
5994 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
5995 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
5996
5997 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
5998 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
5999
6000 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6001 a group.
6002
6003 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6004 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6005
6006 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6007
6008 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6009
6010 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6011
6012 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6013
6014 Use the `Y c' command.
6015
6016 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6017
6018 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6019
6020 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6021
6022 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6023 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6024
6025 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6026
6027 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6028
6029 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6030 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6031
6032 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6033
6034 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6035 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6036 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6037 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6038 this issue.)
6039
6040 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6041 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6042 particular news group. This can be done by:
6043
6044 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6045
6046 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6047 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6048 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6049 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6050 for reading and posting).
6051
6052 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6053 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6054 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6055 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6056 there.
6057
6058 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6059 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6060
6061 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6062 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6063 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6064 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6065 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6066
6067 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6068 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6069
6070 ** CC mode changes.
6071
6072 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6073 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6074 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6075 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6076 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6077 loaded.
6078
6079 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6080 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6081 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6082 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6083 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6084 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6085
6086 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6087 of the current buffer.
6088
6089 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6090 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6091 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6092
6093 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6094 style that the Python developers like.
6095
6096 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6097 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6098 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6099
6100 ** VC Changes [new]
6101
6102 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6103 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6104 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6105
6106 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6107 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6108 developers.
6109
6110 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6111 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6112
6113 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6114 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6115 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6116 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6117
6118 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6119 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6120
6121 ** Calendar changes.
6122
6123 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6124 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6125 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6126
6127 ** ps-print changes
6128
6129 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6130
6131 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6132
6133 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6134 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6135 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6136 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6137 It defaults to `letter'.
6138 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6139
6140 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6141 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6142 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6143
6144 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6145 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6146 It defaults to 1.
6147
6148 *** Horizontal layout
6149
6150 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6151 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6152 All are measured in points.
6153
6154 *** Vertical layout
6155
6156 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6157 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6158 All are measured in points.
6159
6160 *** Headers
6161
6162 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6163 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6164 margin above the text.
6165
6166 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6167 framing box is printed around the header.
6168
6169 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6170 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6171
6172 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6173 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6174 `ps-header-font-size'.
6175
6176 *** Font managing
6177
6178 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6179 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6180 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6181 elements to this alist.
6182
6183 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6184 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6185
6186 ** hideshow changes.
6187
6188 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6189 C++, ; for lisp).
6190
6191 *** Support for java-mode added.
6192
6193 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6194 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6195
6196 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6197 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6198 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6199
6200 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6201 robust and a lot faster.
6202
6203 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6204
6205 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6206 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6207 documentation for more details.
6208
6209 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6210
6211 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6212 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6213 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6214 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6215 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6216
6217 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6218 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6219 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6220 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6221
6222 ** Font Lock mode
6223
6224 *** Custom support
6225
6226 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6227 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6228 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6229 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6230 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6231 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6232
6233 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6234
6235 *** Maximum decoration
6236
6237 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6238 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6239 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6240 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6241 to get the old behavior.
6242
6243 *** New support
6244
6245 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6246
6247 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6248 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6249
6250 *** Configurable support
6251
6252 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6253 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6254 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6255 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6256 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6257 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6258 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6259
6260 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6261 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6262 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6263
6264 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6265
6266 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6267 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6268 for any mode.
6269
6270 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6271
6272 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6273
6274 in your ~/.emacs.
6275
6276 *** New faces
6277
6278 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6279 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6280 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6281 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6282
6283 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6284
6285 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6286 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6287 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6288
6289 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6290
6291 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6292 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6293 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6294 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6295 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6296 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6297 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6298
6299 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6300 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6301 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6302 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6303 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6304 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6305
6306 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6307
6308 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6309 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6310 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6311 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6312
6313 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6314 settings.
6315
6316 ** Ada mode changes.
6317
6318 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6319 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6320 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6321 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6322 stubs.
6323
6324 *** There are two new commands:
6325 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6326 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6327
6328 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6329 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6330 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6331
6332 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6333 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6334 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6335
6336 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6337 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6338 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6339 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6340
6341 ** Scheme mode changes.
6342
6343 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6344 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6345 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6346 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6347 have any effect.
6348
6349 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6350 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6351 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6352 variables as buffer-local variables.
6353
6354 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6355 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6356
6357 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6358
6359 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6360 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6361 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6362 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6363
6364 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6365 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6366 buffer in Emacs.
6367
6368 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6369 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6370 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6371 option takes precedence.
6372
6373 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6374 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6375 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6376
6377 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6378 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6379 the current defun.
6380
6381 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6382 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6383
6384 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6385 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6386 necessary).
6387
6388 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6389 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6390 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6391 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6392 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6393 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6394
6395 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6396 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6397 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6398 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6399
6400 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6401 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6402 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6403 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6404 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6405
6406 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6407 since it applies only to the current frame.
6408
6409 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6410 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6411 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6412
6413 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6414 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6415 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6416 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6417 instead of just the file you are editing.
6418
6419 ** RefTeX mode
6420
6421 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6422 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6423 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6424 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6425 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6426
6427 C-c ( reftex-label
6428 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6429 knows which kind of label is needed.
6430
6431 C-c ) reftex-reference
6432 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6433 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6434
6435 C-c [ reftex-citation
6436 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6437 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6438
6439 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6440 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6441
6442 C-c = reftex-toc
6443 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6444 can quickly jump to every section.
6445
6446 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6447 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6448 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6449 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6450 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6451
6452 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6453
6454 *** Info documentation is now available.
6455
6456 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6457 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6458
6459 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6460 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6461
6462 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6463 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6464
6465 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6466 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6467 appropriate functions.
6468
6469 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6470 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6471
6472 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6473 been cleaned.
6474
6475 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6476 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6477
6478 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6479 shall be delimited.
6480
6481 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6482 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6483 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6484
6485 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6486 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6487 prefixed with `ALT'.
6488
6489 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6490 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6491 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6492 documentation).
6493
6494 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6495 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6496 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6497
6498 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6499 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6500
6501 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6502 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6503 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6504
6505 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6506
6507 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6508
6509 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6510 from alien sources.
6511
6512 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6513 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6514 crossref entries.
6515
6516 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6517 region.
6518
6519 *** Added support for imenu.
6520
6521 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6522 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6523 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6524 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6525
6526 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6527 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6528
6529 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6530
6531 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6532
6533 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6534 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6535 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6536 as an argument.
6537
6538 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6539 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6540
6541 ** browse-url changes
6542
6543 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6544 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6545 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6546 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6547 customization variables.
6548
6549 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6550
6551 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6552 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6553 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6554
6555 ** Changes in Ediff
6556
6557 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6558 pops up the Info file for this command.
6559
6560 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6561 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6562 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6563 directories).
6564
6565 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6566 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6567 files in the same directory.
6568
6569 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6570 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6571 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6572
6573 ** Changes in Viper
6574
6575 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6576 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6577 instead of vip-.
6578 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6579 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6580 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6581 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6582 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6583 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6584 color when Viper is in insert state.
6585 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6586 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6587 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6588
6589 ** Etags changes.
6590
6591 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6592 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6593 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6594 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6595 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6596
6597 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6598
6599 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6600 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6601
6602 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6603 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6604 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6605
6606 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6607 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6608 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6609 methods and protocols.
6610
6611 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6612 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6613 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6614 paragraph name.
6615
6616 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6617 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6618 at least M times and as many as N times.
6619
6620 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6621 in files has changed slightly.
6622
6623 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6624 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6625 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6626 with old time-stamp-format values.
6627
6628 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6629 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6630 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6631 reasons.
6632
6633 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6634 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6635 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6636 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6637 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6638 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6639
6640 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6641 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6642 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6643
6644 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6645 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6646 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6647 recommended now will continue to work then.
6648
6649 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6650 details.
6651
6652 ** There are some additional major modes:
6653
6654 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6655 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6656 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6657
6658 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6659 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6660 into Emacs.
6661
6662 ** New Lisp packages include:
6663
6664 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6665
6666 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6667 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6668
6669 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6670
6671 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6672 in shell buffers.
6673
6674 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6675 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6676 and `elint-defun'.
6677
6678 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6679 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6680 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6681 strings or comments.
6682
6683 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6684 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6685 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6686 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6687 at these points.
6688
6689 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6690 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6691
6692 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6693 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6694
6695 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6696
6697 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6698 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6699
6700 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6701
6702 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6703
6704 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6705
6706 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6707 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6708
6709 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6710 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6711 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6712 original place after inserting the copy.
6713
6714 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6715 on the buffer.
6716
6717 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6718 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6719 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6720
6721 Enable mouse-drag with:
6722 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6723 -or-
6724 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6725
6726 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6727 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6728
6729 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6730 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6731
6732 *** ogonek
6733
6734 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6735 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6736 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6737 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6738 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6739 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6740 instance) and vice versa.
6741
6742 To use this package load it using
6743 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6744 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6745 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6746 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6747 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6748 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6749
6750 *** Interface to ph.
6751
6752 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6753
6754 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6755 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6756 these servers.
6757
6758 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6759
6760 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6761 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6762 while the real cursor does not move.
6763
6764 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6765 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6766
6767 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6768 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6769
6770 ** movemail change
6771
6772 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6773 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6774 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6775 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6776
6777 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6778 \f
6779 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6780
6781 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6782
6783 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6784 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6785 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6786 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6787 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6788
6789 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6790 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6791 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6792 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6793 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6794 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6795 \f
6796 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6797
6798 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6799 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6800 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6801 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6802
6803 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6804 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6805
6806 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6807 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6808 "win".
6809
6810 ** Basic Lisp changes
6811
6812 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6813 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6814
6815 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6816 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6817 or by the user.
6818
6819 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6820
6821 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6822
6823 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6824 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6825
6826 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6827 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6828 its argument.
6829
6830 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6831
6832 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6833
6834 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6835
6836 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6837 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6838 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6839 `format' function.
6840
6841 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6842 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6843 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6844
6845 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6846 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6847 adding one of these suffixes.
6848
6849 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6850 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6851 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6852
6853 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6854 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6855
6856 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6857
6858 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6859 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6860
6861 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6862 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6863
6864 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6865
6866 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6867 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6868
6869 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6870 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6871 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6872 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6873
6874 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6875 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6876 of the last form.
6877
6878 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6879 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6880 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6881 as the last form.
6882
6883 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6884 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6885 matches.
6886
6887 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6888
6889 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6890 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6891 Then it returns that string.
6892
6893 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6894
6895 (with-output-to-string
6896 (princ "The buffer is ")
6897 (princ (buffer-name)))
6898
6899 returns "The buffer is foo".
6900
6901 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6902 is non-nil.
6903
6904 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6905 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6906 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6907
6908 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6909 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6910
6911 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6912 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6913 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6914 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6915 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6916 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6917
6918 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6919 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6920 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6921 characters".
6922
6923 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6924 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6925 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6926 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6927 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6928
6929 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6930 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6931 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6932 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6933
6934 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6935 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6936
6937 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
6938
6939 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6940 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6941 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6942 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6943 guaranteed.
6944
6945 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6946 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6947 character).
6948
6949 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
6950
6951 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
6952 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
6953 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
6954 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
6955 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
6956
6957 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
6958
6959 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
6960 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
6961 more than the number of characters.
6962
6963 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
6964 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
6965 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
6966 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
6967 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
6968 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
6969
6970 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
6971 and returns a string containing those characters.
6972
6973 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
6974 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
6975 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
6976 character, sref signals an error.
6977
6978 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
6979 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
6980 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6981
6982 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
6983 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
6984 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6985
6986 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
6987 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
6988 to a vector of the characters in it.
6989
6990 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
6991 of a string. You call it as follows:
6992
6993 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
6994
6995 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
6996 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
6997 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
6998 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
6999 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7000
7001 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7002 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7003
7004 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7005 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7006
7007 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7008 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7009 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7010 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7011
7012 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7013
7014 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7015
7016 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7017 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7018 are not included in the resulting value.
7019
7020 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7021 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7022 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7023 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7024
7025 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7026 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7027 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7028 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7029 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7030 column START-COLUMN.
7031
7032 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7033 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7034 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7035 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7036 changed text, before the change.
7037
7038 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7039 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7040 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7041
7042 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7043
7044 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7045
7046 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7047 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7048
7049 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7050 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7051 which identify the character within that character set.
7052
7053 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7054 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7055 opposite of split-char.
7056
7057 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7058 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7059
7060 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7061 of all the characters in a string.
7062
7063 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7064 and specifying coding systems.
7065
7066 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7067 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7068 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7069 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7070 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7071 as what to do about code conversion.)
7072
7073 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7074 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7075
7076 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7077 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7078 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7079
7080 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7081 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7082 to match against a file name.
7083
7084 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7085 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7086 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7087 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7088 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7089 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7090
7091 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7092 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7093
7094 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7095 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7096
7097 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7098 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7099 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7100 service names.
7101
7102 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7103 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7104 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7105 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7106 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7107 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7108
7109 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7110 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7111
7112 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7113 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7114 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7115 start the subprocess.
7116
7117 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7118 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7119 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7120 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7121 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7122
7123 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7124 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7125 subprocess.
7126
7127 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7128 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7129 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7130 connection permanently or until overridden.
7131
7132 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7133 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7134 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7135 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7136 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7137 system for one operation at a time.
7138
7139 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7140 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7141
7142 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7143 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7144 The value is a cons cell,
7145 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7146 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7147 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7148 input to the subprocess.
7149
7150 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7151 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7152
7153 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7154 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7155 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7156
7157 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7158 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7159 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7160 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7161 customization.
7162
7163 Thus, instead of writing
7164
7165 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7166 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7167
7168 you would now write this:
7169
7170 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7171 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7172 :type 'boolean
7173 :group foo)
7174
7175 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7176 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7177 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7178 for a description of them.
7179
7180 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7181 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7182
7183 (defgroup ispell nil
7184 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7185 :group 'processes)
7186
7187 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7188 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7189 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7190 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7191 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7192
7193 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7194 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7195 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7196 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7197 first-level subgroups.
7198
7199 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7200
7201 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7202 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7203
7204 ** easy-mmode
7205
7206 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7207 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7208 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7209 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7210 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7211 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7212
7213 ** Text property changes
7214
7215 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7216 text property.
7217
7218 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7219 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7220 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7221 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7222 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7223
7224 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7225 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7226 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7227 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7228
7229 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7230 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7231 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7232
7233 ** Changes in invisibility features
7234
7235 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7236 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7237 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7238 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7239 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7240 make the overlay visible.
7241
7242 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7243 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7244 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7245 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7246 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7247 t when it should hide it.
7248
7249 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7250
7251 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7252 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7253 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7254 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7255 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7256 Here is an example of how to do this:
7257
7258 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7259 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7260 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7261 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7262
7263 ...
7264 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7265
7266 ...
7267 ;; When done with the overlays:
7268 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7269 ;; Or respectively:
7270 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7271
7272 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7273
7274 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7275 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7276 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7277 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7278
7279 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7280 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7281 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7282
7283 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7284 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7285
7286 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7287 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7288
7289 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7290 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7291 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7292
7293 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7294 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7295 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7296 determine the syntax type of the character.
7297
7298 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7299 of the current buffer.
7300
7301 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7302 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7303 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7304
7305 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7306 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7307 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7308 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7309 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7310
7311 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7312 text property.
7313
7314 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7315 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7316 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7317
7318 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7319 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7320 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7321 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7322 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7323
7324 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7325 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7326 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7327
7328 ** Changes in face features
7329
7330 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7331 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7332
7333 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7334 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7335
7336 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7337 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7338
7339 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7340 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7341
7342 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7343 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7344 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7345 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7346 overlay property).
7347
7348 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7349 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7350
7351 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7352
7353 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7354 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7355 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7356 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7357
7358 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7359 begins with ~.
7360
7361 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7362 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7363
7364 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7365 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7366
7367 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7368 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7369
7370 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7371 character code conversion as well as other things.
7372
7373 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7374 (formerly it did not).
7375
7376 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7377 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7378
7379 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7380 instead of constant strings.
7381
7382 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7383 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7384 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7385
7386 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7387 in the same way as before.
7388
7389 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7390 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7391 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7392
7393 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7394 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7395 else, and returns nil.
7396
7397 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7398 directory cannot be listed.
7399
7400 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7401
7402 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7403 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7404 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7405 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7406 ways:
7407
7408 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7409 It is available through the history command M-n.
7410
7411 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7412 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7413 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7414 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7415 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7416
7417 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7418 argument in this way.
7419
7420 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7421 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7422 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7423
7424 ** Echo area features
7425
7426 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7427 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7428 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7429 after the echo area is cleared.
7430
7431 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7432 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7433
7434 ** Keyboard input features
7435
7436 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7437 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7438
7439 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7440 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7441 by keyboard macros.
7442
7443 ** Frame-related changes
7444
7445 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7446 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7447 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7448
7449 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7450 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7451 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7452
7453 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7454 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7455 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7456 in the selected frame.
7457
7458 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7459 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7460 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7461
7462 ** X Windows features
7463
7464 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7465 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7466 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7467
7468 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7469 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7470
7471 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7472 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7473 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7474
7475 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7476 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7477
7478 ** Subprocess features
7479
7480 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7481 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7482 automatically.
7483
7484 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7485 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7486
7487 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7488 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7489
7490 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7491 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7492
7493 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7494 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7495 goes after the other menu items.
7496
7497 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7498 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7499 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7500 are in use.
7501
7502 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7503 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7504
7505 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7506 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7507 form.
7508
7509 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7510 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7511 but its hook is still run.
7512
7513 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7514 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7515
7516 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7517 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7518 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7519
7520 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7521 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7522 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7523 warned.
7524
7525 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7526 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7527
7528 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7529 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7530 functions like display-time.
7531
7532 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7533 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7534
7535 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7536 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7537 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7538
7539 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7540 if there is an error in compilation.
7541
7542 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7543 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7544 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7545 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7546
7547 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7548 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7549 the *scratch* buffer.
7550
7551 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7552 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7553 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7554 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7555
7556 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7557 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7558 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7559
7560 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7561 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7562 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7563 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7564
7565 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7566 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7567 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7568
7569 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7570 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7571 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7572 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7573 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7574 files at all.
7575
7576 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7577 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7578 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7579 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7580
7581 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7582 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7583 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7584 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7585
7586 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7587
7588 ** imenu.el changes.
7589
7590 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7591 item from menu created by imenu.
7592
7593 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7594 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7595 select one of those items.
7596 \f
7597 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7598 \f
7599 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7600
7601 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7602 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7603
7604 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7605 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7606 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7607 \f
7608 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7609
7610 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7611 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7612
7613 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7614 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7615 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7616 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7617 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7618 all caps.
7619
7620 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7621 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7622
7623 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7624 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7625 as in previous Emacs versions.
7626
7627 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7628 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7629 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7630 frames.
7631
7632 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7633 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7634 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7635 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7636 accident.
7637
7638 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7639 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7640 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7641 line and then executing the macro.
7642
7643 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7644
7645 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7646 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7647 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7648 characters.
7649
7650 ** Font Lock mode
7651
7652 *** Font Lock support modes
7653
7654 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7655 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7656 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7657 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7658 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7659
7660 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7661
7662 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7663
7664 in your ~/.emacs.
7665
7666 *** lazy-lock
7667
7668 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7669 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7670 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7671 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7672 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7673 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7674 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7675
7676 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7677
7678 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7679
7680 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7681
7682 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7683
7684 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7685 paren and key.
7686
7687 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7688 supported.
7689
7690 ** Gnus changes.
7691
7692 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7693 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7694 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7695 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7696
7697 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7698 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7699
7700 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7701 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7702 obsolete.
7703
7704 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7705 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7706
7707 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7708
7709 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7710
7711 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7712
7713 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7714 referred.
7715
7716 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7717
7718 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7719
7720 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7721
7722 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7723
7724 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7725 buffers.
7726
7727 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7728
7729 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7730
7731 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7732
7733 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7734
7735 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7736
7737 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7738
7739 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7740
7741 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7742 is possible.
7743
7744 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7745
7746 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7747 groups of groups.
7748
7749 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7750
7751 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7752 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7753
7754 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7755
7756 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7757
7758 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7759
7760 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7761
7762 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7763 expiration times.
7764
7765 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7766
7767 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7768 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7769
7770 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7771 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7772 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7773
7774 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7775 articles with the `*' command.
7776
7777 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7778
7779 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7780
7781 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7782
7783 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7784
7785 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7786 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7787
7788 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7789 buffer.
7790
7791 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7792
7793 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7794
7795 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7796
7797 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7798
7799 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7800
7801 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7802
7803 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7804
7805 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7806
7807 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7808
7809 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7810 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7811
7812 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7813 refetching.
7814
7815 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7816
7817 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7818 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7819
7820 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7821
7822 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7823
7824 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7825
7826 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7827 articles.
7828
7829 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7830
7831 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7832
7833 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7834 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7835
7836 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7837
7838 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7839
7840 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7841
7842 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7843
7844 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7845
7846 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7847 in greater detail.
7848 \f
7849 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7850
7851 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7852 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7853 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7854 exists.
7855
7856 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7857 as well as lists.
7858
7859 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7860 of a given keymap.
7861
7862 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7863 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7864 keymap or nil.
7865
7866 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7867 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7868 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7869 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7870 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7871 alias.
7872 \f
7873 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7874
7875 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7876
7877 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7878 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7879 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7880 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7881 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7882
7883 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7884 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7885 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7886
7887 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7888
7889 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7890 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7891 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7892 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7893 chapter of the manual for details.
7894
7895 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7896 customization variables take effect.
7897
7898 ** Marking with the mouse.
7899
7900 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7901 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7902 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7903
7904 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7905
7906 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7907
7908 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7909 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7910
7911 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7912 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7913 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7914 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7915 applications, these problems are significant.
7916
7917 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7918 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7919 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7920 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7921 other DOS application as a subprocess.
7922
7923 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7924 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7925
7926 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7927 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7928 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7929 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7930 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7931 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7932
7933 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7934
7935 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7936 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7937 minibuffer contains.
7938
7939 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7940
7941 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7942 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7943 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7944 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7945
7946 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7947 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7948 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
7949 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
7950
7951 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
7952 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
7953
7954 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
7955 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
7956 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
7957
7958 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
7959 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
7960 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
7961 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
7962
7963 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
7964
7965 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
7966 to replace the characters it "deletes".
7967
7968 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
7969
7970 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
7971 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
7972 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
7973 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
7974 immediately after the selected one.
7975
7976 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
7977 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
7978
7979 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
7980
7981 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
7982 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
7983 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
7984 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
7985 recover-session.
7986
7987 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
7988 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
7989 will not work.
7990
7991 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
7992 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
7993 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
7994 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
7995 now that the bug is fixed.
7996
7997 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
7998
7999 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8000 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8001 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8002 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8003
8004 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8005 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8006 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8007 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8008
8009 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8010 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8011 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8012
8013 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8014 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8015 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8016 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8017 remain normal.
8018
8019 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8020 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8021
8022 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8023 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8024 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8025 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8026
8027 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8028 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8029 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8030 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8031 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8032 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8033
8034 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8035 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8036 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8037 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8038
8039 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8040 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8041 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8042
8043 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8044 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8045 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8046 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8047 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8048 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8049 to a limitation in font-lock).
8050
8051 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8052
8053 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8054 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8055 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8056 this example:
8057
8058 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8059 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8060
8061 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8062
8063 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8064
8065 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8066
8067 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8068
8069 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8070 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8071 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8072 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8073 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8074 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8075
8076 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8077 does the same job.
8078
8079 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8080 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8081
8082 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8083 text.
8084
8085 ** Font Lock mode
8086
8087 *** Global Font Lock mode
8088
8089 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8090 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8091 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8092 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8093 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8094
8095 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8096
8097 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8098
8099 in your ~/.emacs.
8100
8101 *** Local Refontification
8102
8103 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8104 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8105 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8106 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8107
8108 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8109 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8110 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8111 above and below point.
8112
8113 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8114
8115 ** Follow mode
8116
8117 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8118 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8119 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8120 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8121 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8122 follow-mode.
8123
8124 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8125
8126 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8127 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8128
8129 ** hide-show changes.
8130
8131 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8132 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8133 normal hooks.
8134
8135 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8136 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8137
8138 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8139 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8140 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8141
8142 ** MSDOS Changes
8143
8144 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8145 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8146
8147 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8148 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8149
8150 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8151
8152 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8153 pressing both mouse buttons.
8154
8155 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8156 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8157 are:
8158
8159 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8160 now works.
8161
8162 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8163
8164 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8165 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8166
8167 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8168
8169 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8170
8171 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8172
8173 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8174
8175 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8176 \f
8177 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8178
8179 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8180 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8181 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8182 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8183 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8184
8185 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8186
8187 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8188 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8189 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8190 be different.
8191
8192 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8193 than `system-type'.
8194
8195 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8196
8197 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8198 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8199
8200 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8201 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8202
8203 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8204 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8205 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8206
8207 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8208 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8209 like this:
8210
8211 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8212
8213 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8214 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8215 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8216
8217 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8218 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8219 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8220
8221 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8222 up if too much time passes.
8223
8224 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8225
8226 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8227 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8228 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8229 form in BODY.
8230
8231 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8232 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8233 call looks like this:
8234
8235 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8236
8237 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8238 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8239 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8240 ARGS.
8241
8242 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8243 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8244 command.
8245
8246 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8247 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8248 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8249 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8250
8251 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8252 idle for SECS seconds.
8253
8254 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8255 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8256 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8257 instead.
8258
8259 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8260 there is no answer within a certain time.
8261
8262 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8263
8264 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8265 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8266 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8267
8268 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8269 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8270 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8271 arguments in between are ignored.
8272
8273 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8274 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8275
8276 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8277 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8278 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8279 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8280 version.
8281
8282 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8283 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8284 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8285 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8286 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8287 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8288
8289 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8290 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8291 systems with limited file name syntax.
8292
8293 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8294 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8295 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8296 completions.el:
8297
8298 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8299 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8300 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8301
8302 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8303 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8304 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8305 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8306 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8307
8308 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8309 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8310 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8311
8312 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8313 marker from its buffer position.
8314
8315 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8316 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8317 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8318
8319 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8320 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8321 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8322 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8323 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8324 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8325
8326 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8327 errors that happen often during editing.
8328
8329 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8330 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8331 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8332
8333 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8334 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8335
8336 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8337 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8338 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8339 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8340 and not get-buffer-window.
8341
8342 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8343 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8344 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8345
8346 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8347 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8348 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8349 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8350 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8351 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8352 over and over for the same text.
8353
8354 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8355
8356 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8357 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8358
8359 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8360 ;; $HEADER: text $
8361
8362 in addition to the normal
8363
8364 ;; HEADER: text
8365
8366 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8367 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8368 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8369 \f
8370 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
8371
8372 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8373 Copyright information:
8374
8375 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8376
8377 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8378 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8379 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8380 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8381
8382 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8383 of this document, or of portions of it,
8384 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8385 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8386 \f
8387 Local variables:
8388 mode: outline
8389 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
8390 end: