1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
13 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
32 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
34 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
35 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
37 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
38 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
39 Postscript files are included.
41 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
44 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
45 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
47 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
48 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
49 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
50 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
51 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
52 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
55 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
56 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
57 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
58 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
60 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
61 a version-dependent component.
63 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
64 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
65 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
66 character is still bound as before.
68 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
71 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
72 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
75 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
76 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
77 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
78 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
79 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
80 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
81 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
84 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
85 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
86 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
87 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
88 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
89 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
90 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
91 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
92 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
94 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
95 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
98 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
99 point in a pop-up window.
102 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
103 displays all characters in that character set.
105 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
106 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
109 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
110 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
111 defined on newcomment.el.
114 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
116 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
117 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
120 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
121 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
122 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
123 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
126 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
127 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
128 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
129 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
132 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
133 on the display using several methods
136 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
137 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
138 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
141 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
142 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
144 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
146 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
147 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
150 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
151 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
152 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
153 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
156 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
157 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
158 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
160 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
161 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
164 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
165 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
168 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
169 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
173 ** New X resources recognized
175 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
176 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
177 is useful for debugging X problems.
181 emacs.synchronous: true
183 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
184 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
185 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
186 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
187 visual class names are
196 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
197 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
200 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
201 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
202 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
207 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
209 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
210 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
211 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
212 resource values are `true' or `on'.
216 emacs.privateColormap: true
218 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
219 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
220 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
222 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
223 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
224 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
228 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
231 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
232 all frames except the selected one.
234 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
235 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
237 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
238 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
239 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
240 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
242 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
243 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
245 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
246 read mail from the menu etc.
249 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
250 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
252 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
254 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
258 -------------------------
265 ** Changes in Outline mode.
267 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
268 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
269 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
271 ** Changes to Emacs Server
274 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
275 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
276 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
277 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
278 buffers to kill, as before.
280 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
281 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
284 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
286 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
287 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
288 use. Default is 1000.
291 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
292 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
295 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
296 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
297 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
301 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
302 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
305 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
306 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
308 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
309 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
310 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
312 ** Faces and frame parameters.
314 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
315 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
316 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
317 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
318 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
319 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
320 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
322 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
323 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
324 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
325 `default' face and vice versa.
329 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
330 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
331 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
334 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
336 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
337 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
338 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
339 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
341 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
342 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
343 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
345 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
348 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
350 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
351 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
352 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
353 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
356 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
358 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
359 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
360 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
361 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
364 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
365 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
366 under Lisp changes, below.
368 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
371 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
372 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
373 otherwise, it is hollow.
375 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
376 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
377 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
378 customizing face `fringe'.
380 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
381 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
385 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
386 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
388 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
390 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
391 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
392 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
393 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
394 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
397 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
398 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
399 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
400 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
401 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
402 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
404 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
405 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
406 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
407 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
408 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
409 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
411 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
412 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
413 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
414 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
415 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
417 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
419 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
420 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
421 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
424 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
426 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
427 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
428 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
429 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
430 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
435 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
436 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
441 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
442 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
443 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
446 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
448 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
449 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
450 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
453 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
454 have to do anything to activate it.
456 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
458 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
459 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
460 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
461 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
463 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
466 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
468 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
470 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
473 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
476 ** Hscrolling in C code.
478 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
479 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
484 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
485 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
488 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
490 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
491 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
492 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
493 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
494 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
496 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
498 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
501 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
502 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
504 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
506 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
507 `*') toggles the status.
509 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
511 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
513 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
514 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
517 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
519 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
520 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
521 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
522 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
523 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
524 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
529 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
530 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
531 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
534 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
535 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
536 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
537 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
538 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
539 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
541 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
543 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
545 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
546 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
547 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
549 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
550 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
552 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
553 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
554 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
556 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
558 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
559 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
560 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
561 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
563 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
564 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
565 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
566 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
568 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
569 notably at the end of lines.
571 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
572 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
575 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
577 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
578 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
579 after each match to get the replacement text.
581 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
582 you edit the replacement string.
584 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
585 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
586 lisp-complete-symbol.
588 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
590 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
591 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
592 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
593 window size by setting the following variable:
595 - User option: max-mini-window-height
597 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
598 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
599 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
603 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
605 ** Changes to hideshow.el
607 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
608 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
610 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
612 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
613 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
614 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
615 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
616 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
617 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
619 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
620 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
621 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
622 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
624 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
626 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
627 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
628 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
629 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
630 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
632 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
633 something like this in your .emacs.
635 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
637 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
639 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
642 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
643 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
644 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
647 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
651 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
654 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
655 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
657 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
658 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
659 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
660 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
662 ** Changes in Font Lock
664 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
665 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
668 ** Comint (subshell) changes
670 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
671 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
672 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
673 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
674 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
675 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
676 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
677 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
679 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
680 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
682 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
683 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
684 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
686 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
687 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
688 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
690 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
691 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
692 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
693 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
695 ** Changes to Rmail mode
697 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
698 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
699 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
700 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
701 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
704 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
705 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
706 regexp matching your mail addresses.
708 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
709 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
710 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
711 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
712 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
714 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
717 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
718 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
721 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
722 in which folder to put messages automatically.
724 ** Changes to TeX mode
726 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
729 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
731 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
732 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
733 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
734 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
735 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
736 can be edited from that buffer.
738 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
739 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
740 `A' to use all marked entries).
742 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
743 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
745 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
746 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
747 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
750 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
751 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
752 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
753 in column 1 are always made leaves.
755 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
756 has the following new features:
758 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
759 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
760 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
761 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
763 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
764 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
765 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
766 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
767 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
770 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
776 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
777 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
778 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
780 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
781 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
782 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
783 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
788 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
789 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
790 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
792 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
793 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
796 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
797 between custom options. Example:
799 (defcustom default-input-method nil
800 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
801 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
802 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
804 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
805 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
807 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
808 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
809 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
811 ** New features in evaluation commands
813 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
814 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
815 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
816 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
817 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
819 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
820 code when called with a prefix argument.
824 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
825 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
826 spell-checks the current buffer.
828 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
831 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
832 correction is made and re-checked.
834 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
836 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
839 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
842 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
847 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
848 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
849 is, delete only empty directories.
851 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
852 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
853 copy directories recursively.
855 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
856 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
857 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
859 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
860 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
863 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
864 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
865 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
866 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
867 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
869 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
872 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
873 use the -f option when sending mail.
877 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
878 current user setups (although it's believed that these
879 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
880 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
881 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
882 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
885 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
886 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
887 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
888 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
889 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
892 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
893 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
894 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
895 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
896 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
897 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
899 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
900 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
901 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
902 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
903 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
904 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
905 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
906 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
908 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
909 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
910 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
911 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
914 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
915 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
916 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
917 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
918 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
919 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
920 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
921 function documentation for more info.
923 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
924 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
925 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
926 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
927 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
928 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
929 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
930 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
932 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
934 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
935 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
937 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
938 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
939 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
940 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
941 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
944 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
945 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
946 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
949 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
950 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
951 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
952 chapter about this in the manual.
954 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
955 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
956 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
957 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
958 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
960 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
961 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
962 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
964 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
965 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
967 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
968 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
969 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
972 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
973 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
974 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
975 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
978 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
979 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
980 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
983 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
984 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
985 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
986 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
989 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
990 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
991 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
992 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
995 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
996 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
997 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
999 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1001 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1002 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1003 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1004 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1006 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1007 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1008 the column specified by comment-column.
1010 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1011 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1012 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1013 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1014 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1015 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1017 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1018 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1021 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1023 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1024 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1025 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1026 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1029 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1031 ** Makefile mode changes
1033 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1035 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1036 Fontlock mode is active.
1040 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1041 so that searches can be resumed.
1043 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1044 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1045 that started the search.
1047 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1048 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1050 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1052 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1053 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1054 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1055 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1056 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1057 `secondary-selection'.
1059 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1060 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1061 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1062 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1063 usual snappy response.
1065 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1066 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1067 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1068 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1070 ** Changes in sort.el
1072 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1073 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1074 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1077 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1080 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1081 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1082 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1084 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1085 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1087 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1088 output ^M at the end of lines.
1090 ** Shell script mode changes.
1092 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1093 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1094 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1098 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1100 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1101 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1102 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1103 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1104 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1106 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1107 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1109 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1110 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1112 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1115 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1117 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1119 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1122 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1123 variables are tagged.
1125 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1127 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1130 ** Changes in etags.el
1132 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1133 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1134 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1136 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1137 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1139 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1140 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1141 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1142 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1144 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1146 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1147 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1149 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1151 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1152 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1153 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1155 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1156 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1158 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1159 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1162 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1163 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1164 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1166 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1167 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1168 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1169 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1172 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1173 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1174 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1176 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1179 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1181 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1182 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1183 expression from that list, are not checked.
1185 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1186 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1187 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1188 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1190 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1192 ** New modes and packages
1195 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1196 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1197 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1198 on certain projects.
1200 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1201 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1203 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1205 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1206 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1207 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1208 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1209 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1210 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1211 corresponding file is read.
1214 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1217 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1218 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1220 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1221 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1222 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1225 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1226 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1227 separate Texinfo file.
1230 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1231 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1232 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1233 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1234 enter checkin log messages.
1237 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1238 without invoking external programs.
1240 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1241 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1242 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1243 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1244 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1246 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1247 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1249 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1250 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1252 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1253 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1254 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1255 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1256 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1259 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1260 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1261 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1262 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1265 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1266 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1267 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1269 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1272 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1274 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1276 ; comment (until end of line)
1280 $A default non-terminal
1281 $"C" default terminal
1282 $?C? default special
1283 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1284 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1285 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1286 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1287 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1288 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1289 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1290 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1291 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1292 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1293 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1294 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1295 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1296 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1297 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1299 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1301 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1302 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1303 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1304 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1305 equal signs of assignments.
1308 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1309 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1312 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1313 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1314 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1315 customize the package.
1317 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1319 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1320 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1321 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1322 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1323 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1324 which answers different needs.
1327 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1328 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1329 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1330 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1331 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1335 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1336 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1339 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1342 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1344 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1346 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1349 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1352 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1355 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1357 *** whitespace.el ???
1359 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1360 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1361 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1362 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1363 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1364 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1365 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1367 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1369 Here is an example of columns:
1372 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1373 porcupine strawberry airplane
1375 Doing the following settings:
1377 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1378 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1379 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1380 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1383 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1385 M-x delimit-columns-region
1389 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1390 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1391 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1393 delim-col has the following options:
1395 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1398 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1399 between each column.
1401 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1404 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1407 delim-col has the following commands:
1409 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1410 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1413 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1414 were operated on recently.
1416 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1418 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1419 recentf at Emacs startup.
1421 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1422 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1423 file list can be displayed:
1425 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1426 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1427 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1429 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1430 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1432 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1436 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1437 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1438 specific to Message mode.
1441 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1442 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1443 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1446 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1447 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1448 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1450 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1451 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1454 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1456 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1457 minibuffer with completion.
1459 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1460 with the diary features.
1462 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1463 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1465 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1468 ** Withdrawn packages
1470 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1471 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1473 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1475 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1478 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1479 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1482 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1483 is running in batch mode. For example,
1485 (message "%s" (read t))
1487 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1491 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1492 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1494 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1495 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1498 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1501 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1503 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1504 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1506 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1508 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1509 comparison is done with `eq'.
1511 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1513 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1517 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1518 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1519 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1521 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1522 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1524 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1525 function was declared obsolete.
1527 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1528 retained as an alias).
1530 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1531 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1532 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1534 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1536 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1538 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1539 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1541 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1543 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1545 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1547 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1548 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1549 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1550 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1553 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1554 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1555 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1556 minibuffer even if it is active.
1558 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1559 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1560 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1561 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1562 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1563 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1565 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1566 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1567 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1568 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1569 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1570 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1571 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1573 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1574 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1575 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1577 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1578 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1579 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1580 Default value is nil.
1582 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1585 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1586 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1587 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1589 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1592 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1593 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1594 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1595 than replacing the local map.
1597 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1598 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1600 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1602 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1605 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1607 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1609 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1610 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1611 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1612 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1614 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1615 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1616 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1617 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1619 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1620 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1621 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1622 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1624 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1625 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1626 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1628 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1629 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1630 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1631 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1632 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1633 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1634 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1637 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1639 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1640 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1641 character set as previously.
1643 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1644 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1645 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1647 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1648 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1649 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1650 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1652 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1653 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1655 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1656 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1659 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1660 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1662 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1663 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1664 buffers and strings.
1666 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1667 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1668 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1669 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1670 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1671 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1672 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1675 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1676 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1677 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1679 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1680 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1681 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1682 may differ between buffer and string text.
1684 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1685 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1687 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1688 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1689 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1690 `composition' from STRING.
1692 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1693 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1695 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1698 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1699 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1700 character set is not used.
1702 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1703 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1704 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1707 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1708 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1709 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1712 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1713 that offset in the file before writing.
1715 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1716 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1718 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1719 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1720 from which the command was issued.
1722 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1723 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1724 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1725 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1728 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1729 to `window-buffer-height'.
1731 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1733 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1734 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1735 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1737 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1740 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1741 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1743 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1744 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1745 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1747 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1748 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1749 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1750 is currently displayed in some window.
1752 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1753 argument function's results.
1755 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1756 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1758 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1759 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1761 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1762 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1764 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1765 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1768 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1769 nil don't display a cursor
1770 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1771 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1772 others display a box cursor.
1774 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1775 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1776 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1777 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1779 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1780 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1781 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1782 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1786 (string-to-syntax "()")
1789 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1792 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1793 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1800 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1805 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1810 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1817 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1818 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1821 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1822 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1823 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1824 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1827 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1829 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1830 for a regexp in a string.
1832 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1833 `mouse-position-function'.
1835 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1836 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1838 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1839 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1842 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1845 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1846 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1849 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1850 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1851 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1852 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1856 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1857 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1860 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1861 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1862 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1863 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1866 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1867 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1868 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1869 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1872 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1873 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1874 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1877 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1878 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1881 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1883 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1884 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1885 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1889 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1890 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1893 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1894 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1897 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1898 instead of being optional.
1901 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1902 modify read-only text.
1905 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1907 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1908 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1909 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1910 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1911 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1913 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1914 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1915 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1916 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1917 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1918 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1919 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1922 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1923 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1924 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1928 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1929 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1932 ** New function `propertize'
1934 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1935 strings with text properties.
1937 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1939 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1940 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1941 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1942 specified value of that property. Example:
1944 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1947 ** push and pop macros.
1949 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1950 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1951 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1953 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1954 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1955 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1957 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1959 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1960 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1962 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1963 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1964 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1965 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1967 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1968 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1969 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1970 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1973 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1974 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1976 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1977 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1978 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1979 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1980 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1982 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1984 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1985 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1986 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1987 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1988 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1989 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1990 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1991 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1992 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1993 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1994 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1995 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1996 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1997 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1998 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
2001 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2003 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2005 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2007 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2008 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2012 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2013 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2014 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2018 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2019 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2021 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2023 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2024 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2025 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2026 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2027 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2029 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2031 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2032 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2033 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2037 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2038 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2039 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2040 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2041 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2043 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2045 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2047 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2049 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2051 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2053 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2056 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2058 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2060 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2062 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2064 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2066 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2068 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2070 Returns the size of TABLE.
2072 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2074 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2076 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2078 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2080 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2084 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2086 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2089 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2091 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2092 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2094 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2096 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2098 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2100 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2101 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2103 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2105 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2107 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2109 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2110 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2111 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2112 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2113 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2115 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2117 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2118 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2119 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2121 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2122 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2124 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2125 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2127 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2128 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2130 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2131 'case-fold-string-hash))
2133 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2136 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2138 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2139 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2140 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2143 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2145 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2146 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2149 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2150 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2151 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2152 is too short to reach that column.
2155 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2156 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2157 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2158 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2160 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2161 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2162 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2165 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2166 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2169 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2170 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2173 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2174 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2175 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2176 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2177 temporary-file-directory instead.
2180 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2181 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2182 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2183 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2186 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2187 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2190 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2192 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2193 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2194 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2197 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2199 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2200 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2201 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2202 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2203 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2204 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2206 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2207 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2208 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2209 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2212 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2214 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2215 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2216 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2219 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2220 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2224 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2226 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2227 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2230 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2233 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2235 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2236 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2239 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2241 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2242 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2248 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2249 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2251 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2252 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2253 to enable sound support.
2255 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2256 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2257 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2258 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2259 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2261 The following sound properties are supported:
2265 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2266 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2270 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2271 may be present, but not both.
2275 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2276 0..1. This property is optional.
2278 Other properties are ignored.
2280 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2282 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2285 ** Changes to garbage collection
2287 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2288 of live and free strings.
2290 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2291 strings that have been consed so far.
2294 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2298 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2300 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2303 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2305 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2307 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2308 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2309 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2310 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2311 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2313 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2314 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2317 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2320 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2322 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2323 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2324 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2325 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2328 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2330 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2331 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2332 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2333 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2335 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2336 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2338 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2339 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2340 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2341 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2342 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2343 just display it black instead.
2345 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2348 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2352 ** New face implementation.
2354 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2355 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2360 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2362 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2364 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2365 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2367 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2369 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2371 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2373 6. Foreground color.
2375 7. Background color.
2377 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2379 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2381 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2383 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2385 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2388 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2389 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2391 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2392 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2393 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2394 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2395 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2396 attributes mentioned above.
2398 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2399 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2402 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2403 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2409 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2410 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2411 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2412 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2413 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2414 results in a fully-specified face.
2417 *** Face realization.
2419 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2420 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2421 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2422 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2423 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2424 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2426 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2427 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2428 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2429 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2431 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2432 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2433 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2434 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2435 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2437 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2438 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2439 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2440 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2441 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2444 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2445 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2446 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2447 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2450 **** Clearing face caches.
2452 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2453 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2459 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2460 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2461 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2463 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2464 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2465 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2466 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2467 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2469 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2470 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2471 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2473 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2475 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2476 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2477 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2478 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2479 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2480 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2481 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2483 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2484 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2490 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2491 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2494 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2495 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2496 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2497 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2498 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2501 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2503 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2506 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2508 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2510 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2511 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2512 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2514 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2515 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2516 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2517 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2518 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2519 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2520 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2521 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2522 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2523 of the face font sort order.
2525 - Function: x-font-family-list
2527 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2528 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2529 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2530 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2532 - Variable: font-list-limit
2534 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2535 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2536 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2539 *** Setting face attributes.
2541 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2542 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2543 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2546 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2547 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2549 The following attributes are recognized:
2553 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2554 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2555 and `?' are allowed.
2559 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2560 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2561 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2562 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2566 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2571 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2572 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2573 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2577 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2578 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2581 `:foreground', `:background'
2583 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2587 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2588 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2589 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2594 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2595 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2596 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2601 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2602 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2603 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2604 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2608 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2609 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2610 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2611 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2612 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2613 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2614 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2615 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2616 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2617 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2618 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2619 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2620 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2621 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2622 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2623 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2628 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2629 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2633 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2634 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2635 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2636 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2637 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2638 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2640 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2641 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2645 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2646 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2647 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2650 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2651 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2652 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2654 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2657 *** Face attributes and X resources
2659 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2662 Face attribute X resource class
2663 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2664 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2665 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2666 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2667 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2668 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2669 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2670 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2671 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2672 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2673 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2674 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2675 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2676 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2677 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2678 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2679 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2680 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2681 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2682 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2685 *** Text property `face'.
2687 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2688 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2689 specification can be
2691 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2693 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2694 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2695 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2696 for face attribute names.
2698 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2699 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2700 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2703 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2705 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2706 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2707 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2708 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2709 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2710 used to clear the mapping table.
2712 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2714 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2715 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2716 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2717 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2718 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2719 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2720 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2721 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2722 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2723 modify their color-related behavior.
2725 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2728 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2730 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2731 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2732 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2733 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2734 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2735 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2736 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2737 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2738 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2741 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2743 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2745 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2746 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2747 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2749 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2751 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2752 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2753 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2755 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2756 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2757 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2758 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2759 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2760 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2761 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2764 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2765 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2766 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2768 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2770 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2772 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2774 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2775 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2776 constrained position if that is is different.
2778 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2779 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2780 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2781 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2782 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2783 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2784 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2785 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2786 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2788 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2789 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2790 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2791 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2792 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2794 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2795 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2797 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2799 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2801 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2802 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2803 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2805 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2807 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2808 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2809 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2810 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2811 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2813 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2815 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2816 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2817 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2818 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2819 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2821 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2823 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2824 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2825 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2827 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2829 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2830 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2831 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2836 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2837 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2838 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2839 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2841 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2842 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2843 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2844 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2847 IMAGE is an image specification.
2849 *** Image specifications
2851 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2852 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2853 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2854 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2855 described below are ignored.
2857 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2861 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2862 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2863 to use for its ascent.
2865 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2866 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2868 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2869 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2870 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2871 overlays that apply to the image.
2875 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2876 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2880 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2885 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2886 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2887 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2888 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2890 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2892 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2893 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2894 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2895 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2896 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2897 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2898 background of the image.
2902 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2903 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2904 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2905 may be present in the image specification.
2909 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2910 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2911 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2912 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2914 *** Supported image types
2916 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2918 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2919 properties supported are
2923 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2924 is the frame's foreground.
2928 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2929 the frame's background color.
2931 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2932 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2933 instead of a `:file' property.
2937 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2941 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2947 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2948 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2950 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2952 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2955 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2956 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2959 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2961 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2962 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2963 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2964 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2966 Additional image properties supported are:
2968 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2970 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2971 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2974 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2975 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2977 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2978 to display compressed images.
2980 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2982 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2983 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2986 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2988 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2989 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2992 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2994 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2995 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2998 **** GIF, image type `gif'
3000 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
3001 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3003 Additional image properties supported are:
3007 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3008 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3010 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3011 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3012 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3015 (defun show-anim (file max)
3016 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3017 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3019 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3022 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3025 (goto-char (point-min))
3026 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3027 (insert-image img "x"))
3028 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3030 **** PNG, image type `png'
3032 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3033 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3036 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3038 Additional image properties supported are:
3042 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3043 integer. This is a required property.
3047 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3048 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3052 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3053 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3054 files. This is an required property.
3056 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3061 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3062 which are supported in the current configuration.
3064 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3065 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3066 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3067 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3068 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3070 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3072 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3073 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3074 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3075 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3076 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3082 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3085 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3086 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3087 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3088 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3089 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3090 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3091 of the display margins.
3093 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3094 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3095 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3096 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3102 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3103 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3104 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3105 that have a `help-echo' property.
3107 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3108 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3109 the window in which the help was found.
3111 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3112 `help-echo' text property was found.
3114 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3115 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3117 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3118 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3121 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3122 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3124 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3125 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3126 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3127 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3128 used as help string.
3130 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3131 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3132 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3135 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3137 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3138 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3140 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3141 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3142 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3143 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3146 (global-set-key [A-down]
3149 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3150 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3151 (global-set-key [A-up]
3154 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3155 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3158 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3160 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3161 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3162 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3163 is called with one argument, POS.
3165 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3166 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3167 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3168 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3169 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3172 ** Tool bar support.
3174 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3175 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3176 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3177 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3178 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3179 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3181 *** Tool bar item definitions
3183 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3184 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3185 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3187 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3188 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3189 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3190 property (see below).
3192 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3193 binding are currently ignored.
3195 The following properties are recognized:
3199 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3204 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3208 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3209 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3210 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3212 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3214 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3215 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3219 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3220 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3221 meaning of each of the four elements:
3223 Index Use when item is
3224 ----------------------------------------
3225 0 enabled and selected
3226 1 enabled and deselected
3227 2 disabled and selected
3228 3 disabled and deselected
3230 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3231 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3233 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3235 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3236 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3238 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3240 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3241 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3242 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3244 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3245 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3247 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3248 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3249 pixels. Default is 1.
3251 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3252 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3254 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3256 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3259 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3260 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3261 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3263 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3265 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3267 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3270 ** Mode line changes.
3273 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3275 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3276 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3277 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3279 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3280 a `local-map' text property.
3282 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3283 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3285 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3286 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3287 `local-map' property.
3289 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3290 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3293 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3294 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3297 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3298 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3301 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3303 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3304 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3305 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3306 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3309 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3312 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3313 position in the header-line.
3316 ** Text property `display'
3318 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3319 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3320 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3321 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3323 *** Variable width and height spaces
3325 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3326 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3327 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3328 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3329 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3330 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3331 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3333 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3334 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3335 properties described below.
3337 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3338 characters having the `display' property.
3342 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3343 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3345 - :relative-width FACTOR
3347 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3348 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3349 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3350 width of that character by FACTOR.
3354 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3355 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3357 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3361 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3364 - :relative-height FACTOR
3366 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3367 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3371 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3372 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3373 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3376 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3380 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3381 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3382 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3383 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3384 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3385 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3386 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3387 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3388 as display specification.
3390 *** Other display properties
3392 - :space-width FACTOR
3394 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3395 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3400 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3402 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3403 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3404 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3405 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3406 a font is available counts as a step.
3408 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3409 as tall as the frame's default font.
3411 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3412 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3414 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3415 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3419 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3420 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3421 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3422 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3423 `:height' subproperty.
3425 *** Conditional display properties
3427 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3428 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3429 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3430 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3431 the text having the `display' property.
3433 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3437 ** New menu separator types.
3439 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3440 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3441 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3442 to specify other menu separator types.
3444 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3446 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3449 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3451 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3453 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3455 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3457 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3459 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3461 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3463 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3465 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3467 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3468 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3470 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3472 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3474 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3476 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3478 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3480 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3482 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3484 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3486 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3488 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3490 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3492 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3494 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3496 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3498 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3499 the corresponding single-line separators.
3502 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3504 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3505 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3506 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3507 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3508 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3509 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3510 default foreground is black.
3512 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3513 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3514 `ScrollBarBackground').
3516 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3517 settings for scroll bar colors.
3520 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3521 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3524 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3525 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3526 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3527 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3528 the original window start.
3531 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3532 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3533 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3536 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3538 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3539 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3540 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3541 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3543 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3544 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3546 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3548 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3549 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3550 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3551 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3552 temporarily to nil, for example
3554 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3555 (enlarge-window 10))
3557 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3558 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3560 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3561 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3562 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3563 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3564 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3565 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3569 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3571 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3574 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3576 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3578 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3579 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3580 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3581 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3582 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3584 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3588 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3590 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3593 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3595 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3596 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3598 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3600 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3602 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3603 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3604 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3606 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3607 is the one that is used.
3609 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3610 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3611 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3612 separate from the command's regular output.
3613 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3614 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3615 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3618 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3619 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3620 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3621 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3623 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3624 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3625 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3626 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3628 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3629 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3630 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3631 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3633 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3634 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3635 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3636 they never ignore case.
3638 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3639 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3640 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3641 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3642 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3643 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3644 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3646 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3647 the same format that was used in the file before.
3649 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3650 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3652 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3653 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3654 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3656 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3657 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3658 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3659 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3660 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3661 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3662 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3664 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3665 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3666 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3667 format. You can now customize these variables.
3669 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3670 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3671 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3672 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3674 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3675 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3676 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3678 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3679 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3680 doesn't have any effect.
3682 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3685 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3686 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3687 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3689 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3690 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3691 `auto-show-mode' command.
3693 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3694 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3695 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3696 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3697 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3699 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3700 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3702 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3703 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3704 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3706 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3707 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3708 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3709 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3711 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3713 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3714 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3715 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3716 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3717 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3719 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3720 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3722 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3723 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3724 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3725 `?' on other systems.
3727 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3728 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3731 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3732 current codepage when it starts.
3736 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3737 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3738 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3739 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3740 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3741 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3745 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3746 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3748 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3749 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3750 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3751 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3752 buffer-file-coding-system.
3754 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3755 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3758 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3759 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3760 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3761 list of possible coding systems.
3765 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3766 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3767 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3768 docstring for details.
3770 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3771 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3772 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3773 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3774 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3776 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3777 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3779 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3780 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3782 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3783 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3784 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3785 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3788 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3789 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3791 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3792 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3793 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3794 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3796 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3797 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3798 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3799 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3800 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3802 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3804 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3806 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3807 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3809 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3811 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3812 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3813 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3814 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3815 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3819 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3820 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3821 Gnus manual for the full story.
3823 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3824 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3825 group, which is created automatically.
3827 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3830 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3832 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3833 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3835 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3838 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3840 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3841 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3843 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3845 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3846 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3848 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3849 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3851 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3852 control over simplification.
3854 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3856 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3859 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3861 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3863 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3864 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3865 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3867 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3868 `a' forces normal posting method.
3870 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3873 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3876 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3877 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3879 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3882 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3884 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3886 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3887 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3889 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3890 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3892 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3894 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3897 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3898 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3900 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3901 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3903 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3905 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3907 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3909 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3911 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3912 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3913 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3915 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3916 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3917 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3918 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3919 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3921 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3922 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3923 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3924 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3926 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3927 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3928 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3931 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3933 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3934 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3936 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3937 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3938 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3939 removed from the label.
3941 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3942 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3944 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3945 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3947 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3948 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3951 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3953 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3955 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3956 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3958 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3959 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3960 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3962 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3963 changes with a special face.
3965 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3966 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3967 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3969 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3971 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3972 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3973 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3974 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3975 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3977 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3978 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3979 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3981 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3982 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3983 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3984 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3985 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3986 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3987 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3988 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3989 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3991 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3992 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3993 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3994 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3995 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3998 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3999 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
4000 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
4001 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
4002 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
4003 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
4005 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4006 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4007 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4008 was not documented clearly before.
4010 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4011 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4013 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4015 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4016 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4017 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4018 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4020 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4021 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4022 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4024 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4026 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4027 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4029 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4030 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4033 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4034 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4035 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4036 file names and attributes are returned.
4038 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4039 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4040 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4041 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4044 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4045 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4047 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4049 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4050 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4051 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4054 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4055 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4058 The new function process-running-child-p
4059 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4060 terminal to its own child process.
4062 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4063 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4064 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4065 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4067 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4068 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4070 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4071 :included is an alias for :visible.
4073 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4074 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4075 to move or copy menu entries.
4077 ** Multibyte editing changes
4079 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4080 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4081 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4082 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4083 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4084 (setq char (sref str idx)
4085 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4086 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4088 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4089 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4090 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4092 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4093 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4094 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4096 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4098 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4099 across the boundary.
4101 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4102 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4103 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4104 contains 8-bit characters.
4105 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4106 contains invalid characters.
4108 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4109 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4110 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4111 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4114 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4115 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4116 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4117 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4119 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4120 compose Thai characters in a string.
4122 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4123 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4124 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4125 menus should always use the third argument.
4127 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4128 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4129 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4130 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4132 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4133 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4134 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4135 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4137 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4138 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4139 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4142 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4144 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4145 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4146 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4148 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4149 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4150 means to clear out that attribute.
4152 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4153 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4155 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4156 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4157 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4158 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4160 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4161 the gap of the current buffer.
4163 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4164 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4167 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4168 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4169 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4170 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4172 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4174 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4175 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4176 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4177 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4178 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4180 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4181 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4182 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4183 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4184 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4186 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4187 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4188 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4190 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4191 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4192 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4193 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4194 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4197 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4198 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4199 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4200 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4202 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4204 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4205 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4206 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4207 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4209 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4210 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4211 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4212 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4213 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4214 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4215 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4218 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4221 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4222 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4223 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4224 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4225 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4227 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4228 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4229 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4230 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4232 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4233 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4234 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4235 something that most users not do.
4237 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4238 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4239 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4242 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4245 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4246 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4247 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4248 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4251 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4252 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4253 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4254 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4255 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4258 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4259 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4260 to be confused by TeX commands.
4262 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4263 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4264 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4265 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4267 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4268 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4269 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4270 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4271 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4273 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4274 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4276 ** Changes in input method usage.
4278 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4279 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4282 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4284 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4285 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4287 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4288 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4290 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4292 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4294 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4295 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4297 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4298 given in the following case:
4299 o When you are using a complex input method.
4300 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4302 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4303 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4304 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4305 setting it to t is helpful.
4307 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4309 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4311 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4312 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4313 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4314 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4317 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4318 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4319 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4322 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4324 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4326 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4327 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4329 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4330 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4331 its owner and group.
4333 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4334 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4336 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4337 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4339 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4340 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4341 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4342 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4344 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4345 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4346 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4347 for writing keyboard macros.
4349 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4350 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4351 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4352 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4353 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4356 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4358 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4359 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4362 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4363 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4364 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4365 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4367 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4368 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4369 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4371 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4372 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4373 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4374 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4376 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4377 failure if the command produces no output.
4379 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4380 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4383 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4384 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4385 function and variable names.
4387 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4388 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4389 file-coding-system-alist.
4391 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4392 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4393 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4394 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4395 according to the current fontset.
4397 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4399 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4400 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4401 nonascii-insert-offset.
4403 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4404 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4405 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4406 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4408 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4409 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4411 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4412 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4414 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4415 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4418 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4419 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4421 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4422 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4423 all variables that have documentation.
4425 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4426 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4427 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4428 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4429 it should show; the default is 20.
4431 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4432 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4435 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4436 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4437 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4438 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4439 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4440 Newly added options are included as well.
4442 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4443 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4444 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4446 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4449 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4450 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4452 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4453 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4456 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4457 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4460 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4461 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4462 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4463 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4466 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4468 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4469 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4470 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4472 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4473 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4474 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4479 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4480 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4482 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4483 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4485 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4486 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4488 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4489 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4490 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4491 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4492 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4493 made invisible again.
4495 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4497 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4498 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4499 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4502 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4503 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4504 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4505 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4506 rmail-default-body-file.
4508 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4509 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4510 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4512 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4513 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4514 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4516 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4517 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4518 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4519 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4520 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4521 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4523 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4524 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4525 provided by feedmail are:
4527 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4528 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4529 there is also a queue for draft messages
4531 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4532 be prompted for confirmation
4534 **** does smart filling of address headers
4536 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4537 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4538 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4540 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4541 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4542 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4543 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4547 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4548 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4550 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4551 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4553 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4554 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4555 for a specified regexp.
4559 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4562 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4563 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4566 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4567 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4568 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4569 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4571 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4572 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4573 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4574 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4575 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4577 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4578 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4579 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4580 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4581 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4583 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4584 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4585 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4586 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4588 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4589 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4590 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4592 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4593 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4594 session to resolve them.
4596 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4597 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4598 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4601 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4602 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4603 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4604 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4605 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4606 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4609 ** Changes in Font Lock
4611 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4612 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4613 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4614 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4615 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4617 ** Frame name display changes
4619 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4620 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4621 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4622 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4624 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4625 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4628 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4630 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4631 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4632 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4634 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4636 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4637 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4638 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4640 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4641 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4644 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4645 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4646 previously sent input.
4648 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4649 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4650 as the search string.
4652 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4653 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4657 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4658 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4659 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4662 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4663 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4664 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4665 style is still the default however.
4667 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4669 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4670 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4671 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4673 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4674 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4676 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4677 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4679 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4680 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4682 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4683 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4685 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4686 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4687 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4688 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4690 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4692 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4693 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4694 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4696 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4697 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4698 expanding dynamically.
4700 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4701 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4703 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4704 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4705 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4706 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4708 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4710 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4712 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4713 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4714 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4715 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4716 against the first word in the title.
4718 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4719 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4720 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4721 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4722 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4723 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4725 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4726 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4727 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4728 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4730 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4732 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4733 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4734 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4735 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4736 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4737 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4739 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4740 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4742 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4743 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4744 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4746 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4747 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4751 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4752 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4753 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4755 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4756 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4757 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4758 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4761 o URLs are automatically skipped
4762 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4764 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4766 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4768 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4769 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4770 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4771 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4773 *** New recursive parser.
4775 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4776 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4777 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4779 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4781 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4782 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4783 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4785 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4787 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4789 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4791 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4793 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4795 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4796 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4798 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4800 *** References to external documents.
4802 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4803 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4804 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4805 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4806 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4807 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4808 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4810 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4812 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4813 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4815 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4816 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4818 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4820 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4821 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4823 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4825 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4826 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4827 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4828 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4829 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4830 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4833 *** Support for the varioref package
4835 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4839 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4840 and citations are created. These hooks are
4841 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4842 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4844 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4846 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4847 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4849 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4851 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4852 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4855 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4857 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4858 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4859 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4860 directories that contain the same file name.
4862 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4863 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4864 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4865 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4866 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4867 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4868 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4871 ** New modes and packages
4873 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4874 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4875 it, but some do not.
4877 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4880 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4881 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4884 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4886 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4887 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4888 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4889 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4891 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4892 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4893 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4895 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4896 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4897 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4898 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4899 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4902 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4903 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4905 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4906 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4907 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4908 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4910 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4912 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4913 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4914 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4915 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4916 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4917 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4918 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4919 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4920 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4921 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4922 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4924 Platform-specific modes:
4926 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4927 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4928 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4929 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4930 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4931 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4932 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4933 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4934 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4936 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4938 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4939 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4940 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4941 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4943 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4944 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4945 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4947 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4948 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4949 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4950 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4952 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4953 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4954 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4957 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4958 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4959 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4960 current input method for reading this one event.
4962 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4963 now control whether to output certain characters as
4964 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4965 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4966 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4967 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4969 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4971 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4972 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4974 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4975 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4976 always increases point by 1.
4978 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4979 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4981 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4983 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4984 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4985 default value changed. For example,
4987 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4992 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4995 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4996 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4997 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4998 `:version' in the top level group.
5000 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5002 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
5003 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
5005 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5006 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5007 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5010 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5011 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5014 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5015 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5016 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5018 ** Frame-local variables.
5020 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5021 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5022 local bindings for that variable.
5024 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5025 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5026 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5029 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5030 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5031 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5032 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5034 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5035 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5036 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5037 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5039 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5040 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5041 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5042 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5043 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5045 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5046 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5047 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5048 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5050 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5051 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5053 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5054 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5055 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5057 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5058 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5059 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5060 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5062 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5063 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5066 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5067 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5068 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5069 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5070 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5072 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5073 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5074 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5075 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5077 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5078 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5079 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5080 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5081 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5083 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5084 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5085 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5086 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5088 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5089 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5090 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5092 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5093 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5094 was directed to display this buffer.
5096 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5097 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5098 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5099 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5100 set-window-configuration.
5102 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5103 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5104 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5105 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5107 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5108 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5109 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5111 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5112 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5113 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5115 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5116 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5118 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5119 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5121 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5122 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5123 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5125 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5126 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5127 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5128 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5132 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5133 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5136 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5137 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5138 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5139 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5140 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5142 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5144 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5145 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5146 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5147 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5150 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5151 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5152 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5153 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5154 The supported properties include
5156 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5158 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5159 item should appear in the menu.
5161 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5162 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5163 It should return a binding to use instead.
5165 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5166 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5167 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5168 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5169 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5172 This means that the command normally has no
5173 keyboard equivalent.
5174 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5175 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5176 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5177 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5178 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5180 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5181 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5183 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5187 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5188 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5189 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5190 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5192 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5194 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5195 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5196 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5197 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5198 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5199 forward, away from the user.
5201 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5203 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5204 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5205 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5206 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5207 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5209 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5211 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5212 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5213 that were dragged and dropped.
5215 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5217 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5219 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5220 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5221 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5223 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5224 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5225 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5227 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5228 in Emacs 19 and before.
5230 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5231 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5233 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5234 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5235 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5236 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5238 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5239 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5240 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5241 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5242 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5244 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5245 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5246 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5247 consistent with the new representation.
5249 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5250 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5251 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5252 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5254 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5255 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5256 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5258 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5259 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5260 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5262 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5263 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5264 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5266 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5267 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5269 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5270 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5272 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5273 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5274 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5275 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5277 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5278 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5280 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5281 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5282 buffer or string being searched.
5284 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5285 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5286 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5287 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5288 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5289 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5290 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5292 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5294 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5295 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5296 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5297 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5298 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5299 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5300 define-coding-system-alias.
5302 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5303 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5304 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5305 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5306 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5307 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5308 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5311 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5312 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5313 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5314 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5316 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5317 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5318 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5319 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5321 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5322 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5323 This function requires a user interaction.
5325 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5326 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5327 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5328 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5329 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5330 select-safe-coding-system.
5332 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5333 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5334 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5337 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5338 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5339 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5341 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5342 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5343 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5344 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5346 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5347 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5348 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5351 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5352 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5354 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5355 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5356 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5357 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5358 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5359 range of characters.
5361 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5362 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5364 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5365 in the current buffer at position POS.
5367 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5368 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5369 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5370 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5371 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5372 binding input-method-function to nil.
5374 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5375 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5376 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5377 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5378 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5380 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5381 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5383 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5384 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5386 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5387 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5388 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5389 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5390 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5392 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5394 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5395 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5396 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5399 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5400 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5402 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5403 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5404 in your .emacs file.)
5406 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5407 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5409 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5410 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5412 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5413 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5416 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5417 delete the character before point, as usual.
5419 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5420 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5421 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5423 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5424 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5425 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5426 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5427 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5430 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5431 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5432 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5433 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5434 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5436 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5437 and is an alias for it.
5439 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5440 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5442 ** Scrolling changes
5444 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5445 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5447 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5448 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5451 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5452 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5453 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5454 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5456 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5457 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5458 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5459 recenters the window.
5461 ** International character set support (MULE)
5463 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5464 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5465 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5466 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5467 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5468 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5470 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5471 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5472 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5473 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5474 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5476 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5477 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5478 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5479 language, to make it possible to type them.
5481 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5482 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5484 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5485 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5487 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5489 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5491 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5492 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5493 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5494 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5495 characters for their work until they want to change.
5499 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5500 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5501 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5502 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5503 support several input methods.
5505 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5506 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5509 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5510 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5511 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5512 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5513 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5516 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5517 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5518 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5519 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5520 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5522 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5523 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5524 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5525 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5527 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5528 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5529 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5530 the first guess is wrong.
5532 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5533 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5535 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5536 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5537 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5538 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5540 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5541 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5542 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5543 translate automatically to and from either one.
5545 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5547 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5548 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5549 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5552 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5553 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5554 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5555 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5557 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5558 character conversion as well.
5560 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5562 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5563 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5564 requires using many fonts.
5566 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5567 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5569 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5570 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5571 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5572 you would use a font.
5574 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5575 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5576 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5578 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5579 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5580 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5581 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5582 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5584 *** Defining fontsets.
5586 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5587 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5588 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5590 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5591 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5592 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5593 standard fontset are created automatically.
5595 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5596 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5597 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5598 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5599 name is `fontset-startup'.
5601 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5602 The resource value should have this form:
5603 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5604 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5605 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5606 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5607 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5608 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5609 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5610 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5611 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5613 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5614 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5615 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5617 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5618 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5620 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5621 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5622 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5623 Here is the substitution rule:
5624 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5625 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5626 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5627 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5628 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5630 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5631 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5632 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5634 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5635 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5636 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5637 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5640 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5641 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5643 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5644 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5645 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5646 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5647 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5648 system for new files that you create.
5650 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5651 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5652 whole Emacs session.
5654 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5655 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5656 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5658 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5659 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5660 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5661 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5662 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5664 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5665 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5666 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5667 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5668 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5670 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5671 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5673 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5674 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5676 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5677 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5679 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5680 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5681 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5682 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5685 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5686 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5687 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5688 translated into that character code.
5690 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5691 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5693 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5695 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5696 the coding system for keyboard input.
5698 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5699 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5700 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5702 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5704 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5705 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5706 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5707 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5708 designed to work with terminals.
5710 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5711 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5712 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5713 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5714 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5715 in the corresponding buffer.
5717 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5719 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5720 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5721 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5723 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5724 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5725 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5728 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5729 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5731 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5732 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5733 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5734 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5736 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5737 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5738 related information.
5740 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5741 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5744 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5745 information about the support for a particular language.
5746 You specify the language as an argument.
5748 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5749 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5752 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5753 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5754 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5755 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5757 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5759 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5760 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5761 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5762 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5763 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5764 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5765 K euc-korea (Korean)
5768 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5771 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5772 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5773 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5777 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5778 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5779 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5780 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5782 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5783 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5785 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5786 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5787 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5788 Rmail files themselves.
5790 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5791 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5793 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5796 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5797 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5798 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5799 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5800 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5802 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5803 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5804 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5807 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5808 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5809 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5810 without any conversion.
5812 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5813 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5814 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5815 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5817 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5818 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5820 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5821 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5823 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5824 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5826 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5827 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5828 in the buffer before point.
5830 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5831 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5834 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5835 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5837 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5839 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5840 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5842 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5843 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5844 can become a bottleneck.
5846 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5847 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5848 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5849 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5850 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5851 so useful that the change is worth while.
5853 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5854 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5855 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5856 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5858 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5859 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5862 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5863 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5864 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5866 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5867 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5868 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5870 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5871 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5872 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5874 ** Changes in View mode.
5876 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5877 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5879 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5880 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5882 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5885 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5886 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5888 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5889 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5890 not just the selected window.
5892 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5893 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5894 turns View mode on or off.
5896 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5897 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5898 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5900 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5901 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5903 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5904 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5905 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5906 which version to compare with.
5908 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5909 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5911 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5912 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5913 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5914 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5916 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5917 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5918 blocks, all of them or none.
5920 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5921 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5924 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5925 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5926 However, the mode will not be changed if
5927 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5928 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5929 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5930 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5932 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5934 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5935 these commands do not change the major mode.
5937 ** M-x occur changes.
5939 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5940 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5942 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5943 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5944 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5946 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5947 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5948 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5949 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5950 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5952 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5953 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5954 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5955 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5957 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5958 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5959 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5961 ** Outline mode changes.
5963 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5965 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5967 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5968 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5969 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5972 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5973 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5976 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5977 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5979 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5981 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5982 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5983 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5984 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5986 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5987 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5988 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5990 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5991 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5994 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5995 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5996 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5997 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5999 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
6000 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
6001 can be. The default value is 30.
6003 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6005 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6006 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6007 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6008 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6009 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6012 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6013 compose-mail-other-frame.
6015 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6016 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6017 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6018 buffer that shows the original message.
6020 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6021 with separator lines around the contents.
6023 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6024 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6025 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6026 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6028 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6030 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6031 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6032 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6033 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6035 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6036 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6039 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6040 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6043 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6044 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6045 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6046 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6048 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6049 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6050 be taken to be magic.
6052 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6053 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6054 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6056 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6057 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6059 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6060 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6062 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6064 new key dired.el binding old key
6065 ------- ---------------- -------
6066 * c dired-change-marks c
6068 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6069 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6070 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6072 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6073 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6074 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6075 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6076 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6077 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6081 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6082 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6083 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6084 each time you run it.
6086 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6087 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6089 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6090 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6091 means to move in the opposite direction.
6093 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6094 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6096 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6097 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6098 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6099 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6104 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6106 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6109 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6110 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6112 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6115 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6117 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6119 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6121 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6122 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6123 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6125 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6127 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6129 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6130 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6132 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6133 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6134 used to pick articles.
6136 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6137 another have been added.
6139 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6141 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6142 generating lines in buffers.
6144 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6147 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6149 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6151 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6153 *** Scores can be decayed.
6155 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6157 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6158 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6160 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6163 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6165 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6166 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6168 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6170 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6171 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6173 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6174 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6176 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6179 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6180 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6182 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6184 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6186 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6188 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6190 Use the `Y c' command.
6192 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6194 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6196 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6198 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6199 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6201 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6203 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6205 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6206 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6208 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6210 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6211 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6212 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6213 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6216 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6217 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6218 particular news group. This can be done by:
6220 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6222 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6223 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6224 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6225 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6226 for reading and posting).
6228 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6229 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6230 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6231 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6234 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6235 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6237 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6238 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6239 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6240 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6241 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6243 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6244 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6248 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6249 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6250 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6251 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6252 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6255 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6256 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6257 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6258 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6259 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6260 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6262 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6263 of the current buffer.
6265 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6266 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6267 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6269 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6270 style that the Python developers like.
6272 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6273 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6274 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6278 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6279 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6280 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6282 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6283 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6286 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6287 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6289 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6290 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6291 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6292 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6294 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6295 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6297 ** Calendar changes.
6299 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6300 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6301 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6305 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6307 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6309 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6310 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6311 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6312 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6313 It defaults to `letter'.
6314 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6316 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6317 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6318 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6320 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6321 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6324 *** Horizontal layout
6326 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6327 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6328 All are measured in points.
6332 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6333 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6334 All are measured in points.
6338 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6339 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6340 margin above the text.
6342 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6343 framing box is printed around the header.
6345 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6346 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6348 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6349 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6350 `ps-header-font-size'.
6354 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6355 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6356 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6357 elements to this alist.
6359 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6360 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6362 ** hideshow changes.
6364 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6367 *** Support for java-mode added.
6369 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6370 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6372 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6373 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6374 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6376 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6377 robust and a lot faster.
6379 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6381 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6382 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6383 documentation for more details.
6385 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6387 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6388 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6389 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6390 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6391 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6393 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6394 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6395 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6396 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6402 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6403 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6404 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6405 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6406 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6407 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6409 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6411 *** Maximum decoration
6413 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6414 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6415 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6416 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6417 to get the old behavior.
6421 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6423 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6424 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6426 *** Configurable support
6428 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6429 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6430 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6431 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6432 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6433 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6434 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6436 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6437 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6438 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6440 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6442 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6443 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6446 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6448 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6454 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6455 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6456 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6457 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6459 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6461 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6462 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6463 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6465 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6467 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6468 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6469 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6470 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6471 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6472 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6473 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6475 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6476 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6477 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6478 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6479 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6480 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6482 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6484 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6485 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6486 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6487 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6489 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6492 ** Ada mode changes.
6494 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6495 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6496 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6497 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6500 *** There are two new commands:
6501 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6502 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6504 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6505 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6506 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6508 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6509 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6510 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6512 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6513 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6514 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6515 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6517 ** Scheme mode changes.
6519 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6520 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6521 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6522 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6525 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6526 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6527 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6528 variables as buffer-local variables.
6530 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6533 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6535 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6536 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6537 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6538 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6540 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6541 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6544 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6545 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6546 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6547 option takes precedence.
6549 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6550 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6551 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6553 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6554 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6557 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6558 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6560 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6561 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6564 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6565 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6566 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6567 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6568 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6569 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6571 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6572 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6573 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6574 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6576 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6577 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6578 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6579 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6580 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6582 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6583 since it applies only to the current frame.
6585 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6586 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6587 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6589 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6590 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6591 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6592 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6593 instead of just the file you are editing.
6597 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6598 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6599 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6600 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6601 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6604 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6605 knows which kind of label is needed.
6607 C-c ) reftex-reference
6608 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6609 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6611 C-c [ reftex-citation
6612 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6613 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6615 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6616 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6619 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6620 can quickly jump to every section.
6622 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6623 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6624 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6625 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6626 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6628 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6630 *** Info documentation is now available.
6632 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6633 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6635 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6636 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6638 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6639 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6641 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6642 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6643 appropriate functions.
6645 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6646 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6648 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6651 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6652 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6654 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6657 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6658 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6659 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6661 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6662 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6663 prefixed with `ALT'.
6665 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6666 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6667 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6670 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6671 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6672 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6674 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6675 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6677 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6678 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6679 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6681 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6683 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6685 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6688 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6689 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6692 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6695 *** Added support for imenu.
6697 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6698 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6699 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6700 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6702 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6703 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6705 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6707 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6709 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6710 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6711 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6714 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6715 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6717 ** browse-url changes
6719 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6720 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6721 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6722 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6723 customization variables.
6725 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6727 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6728 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6729 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6733 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6734 pops up the Info file for this command.
6736 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6737 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6738 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6741 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6742 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6743 files in the same directory.
6745 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6746 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6747 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6751 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6752 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6754 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6755 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6756 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6757 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6758 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6759 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6760 color when Viper is in insert state.
6761 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6762 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6763 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6767 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6768 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6769 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6770 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6771 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6773 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6775 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6776 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6778 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6779 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6780 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6782 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6783 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6784 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6785 methods and protocols.
6787 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6788 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6789 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6792 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6793 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6794 at least M times and as many as N times.
6796 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6797 in files has changed slightly.
6799 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6800 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6801 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6802 with old time-stamp-format values.
6804 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6805 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6806 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6809 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6810 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6811 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6812 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6813 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6814 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6816 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6817 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6818 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6820 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6821 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6822 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6823 recommended now will continue to work then.
6825 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6828 ** There are some additional major modes:
6830 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6831 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6832 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6834 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6835 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6838 ** New Lisp packages include:
6840 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6842 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6843 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6845 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6847 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6850 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6851 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6854 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6855 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6856 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6857 strings or comments.
6859 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6860 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6861 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6862 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6865 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6866 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6868 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6869 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6871 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6873 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6874 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6876 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6878 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6880 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6882 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6883 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6885 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6886 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6887 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6888 original place after inserting the copy.
6890 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6893 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6894 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6895 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6897 Enable mouse-drag with:
6898 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6900 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6902 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6903 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6905 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6906 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6910 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6911 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6912 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6913 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6914 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6915 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6916 instance) and vice versa.
6918 To use this package load it using
6919 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6920 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6921 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6922 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6923 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6924 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6926 *** Interface to ph.
6928 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6930 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6931 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6934 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6936 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6937 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6938 while the real cursor does not move.
6940 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6941 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6943 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6944 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6948 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6949 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6950 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6951 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6953 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6955 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6957 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6959 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6960 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6961 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6962 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6963 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6965 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6966 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6967 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6968 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6969 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6970 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6972 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6974 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6975 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6976 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6977 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6979 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6980 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6982 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6983 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6986 ** Basic Lisp changes
6988 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6989 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6991 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6992 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6995 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6997 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6999 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
7000 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7002 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
7003 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
7006 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7008 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7010 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7012 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7013 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7014 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7017 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7018 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7019 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7021 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7022 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7023 adding one of these suffixes.
7025 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7026 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7027 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7029 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7030 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7032 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7034 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7035 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7037 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7038 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7040 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7042 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7043 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7045 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7046 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7047 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7048 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7050 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7051 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7054 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7055 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7056 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7059 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7060 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7063 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7065 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7066 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7067 Then it returns that string.
7069 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7071 (with-output-to-string
7072 (princ "The buffer is ")
7073 (princ (buffer-name)))
7075 returns "The buffer is foo".
7077 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7080 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7081 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7082 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7084 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7085 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7087 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7088 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7089 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7090 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7091 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7092 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7094 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7095 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7096 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7099 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7100 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7101 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7102 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7103 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7105 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7106 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7107 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7108 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7110 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7111 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7113 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7115 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7116 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7117 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7118 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7121 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7122 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7125 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7127 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7128 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7129 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7130 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7131 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7133 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7135 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7136 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7137 more than the number of characters.
7139 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7140 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7141 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7142 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7143 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7144 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7146 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7147 and returns a string containing those characters.
7149 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7150 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7151 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7152 character, sref signals an error.
7154 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7155 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7156 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7158 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7159 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7160 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7162 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7163 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7164 to a vector of the characters in it.
7166 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7167 of a string. You call it as follows:
7169 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7171 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7172 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7173 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7174 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7175 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7177 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7178 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7180 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7181 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7183 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7184 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7185 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7186 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7188 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7190 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7192 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7193 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7194 are not included in the resulting value.
7196 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7197 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7198 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7199 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7201 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7202 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7203 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7204 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7205 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7206 column START-COLUMN.
7208 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7209 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7210 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7211 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7212 changed text, before the change.
7214 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7215 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7216 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7218 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7220 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7222 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7223 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7225 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7226 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7227 which identify the character within that character set.
7229 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7230 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7231 opposite of split-char.
7233 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7234 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7236 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7237 of all the characters in a string.
7239 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7240 and specifying coding systems.
7242 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7243 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7244 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7245 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7246 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7247 as what to do about code conversion.)
7249 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7250 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7252 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7253 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7254 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7256 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7257 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7258 to match against a file name.
7260 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7261 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7262 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7263 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7264 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7265 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7267 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7268 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7270 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7271 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7273 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7274 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7275 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7278 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7279 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7280 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7281 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7282 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7283 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7285 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7286 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7288 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7289 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7290 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7291 start the subprocess.
7293 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7294 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7295 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7296 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7297 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7299 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7300 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7303 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7304 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7305 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7306 connection permanently or until overridden.
7308 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7309 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7310 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7311 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7312 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7313 system for one operation at a time.
7315 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7316 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7318 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7319 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7320 The value is a cons cell,
7321 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7322 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7323 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7324 input to the subprocess.
7326 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7327 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7329 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7330 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7331 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7333 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7334 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7335 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7336 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7339 Thus, instead of writing
7341 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7342 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7344 you would now write this:
7346 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7347 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7351 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7352 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7353 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7354 for a description of them.
7356 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7357 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7359 (defgroup ispell nil
7360 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7363 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7364 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7365 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7366 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7367 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7369 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7370 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7371 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7372 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7373 first-level subgroups.
7375 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7377 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7378 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7382 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7383 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7384 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7385 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7386 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7387 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7389 ** Text property changes
7391 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7394 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7395 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7396 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7397 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7398 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7400 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7401 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7402 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7403 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7405 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7406 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7407 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7409 ** Changes in invisibility features
7411 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7412 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7413 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7414 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7415 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7416 make the overlay visible.
7418 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7419 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7420 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7421 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7422 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7423 t when it should hide it.
7425 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7427 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7428 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7429 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7430 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7431 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7432 Here is an example of how to do this:
7434 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7435 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7436 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7437 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7440 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7443 ;; When done with the overlays:
7444 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7446 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7448 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7450 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7451 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7452 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7453 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7455 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7456 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7457 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7459 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7460 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7462 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7463 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7465 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7466 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7467 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7469 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7470 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7471 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7472 determine the syntax type of the character.
7474 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7475 of the current buffer.
7477 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7478 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7479 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7481 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7482 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7483 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7484 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7485 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7487 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7490 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7491 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7492 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7494 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7495 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7496 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7497 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7498 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7500 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7501 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7502 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7504 ** Changes in face features
7506 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7507 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7509 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7510 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7512 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7513 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7515 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7516 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7518 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7519 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7520 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7521 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7524 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7525 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7527 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7529 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7530 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7531 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7532 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7534 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7537 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7538 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7540 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7541 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7543 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7544 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7546 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7547 character code conversion as well as other things.
7549 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7550 (formerly it did not).
7552 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7553 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7555 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7556 instead of constant strings.
7558 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7559 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7560 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7562 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7563 in the same way as before.
7565 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7566 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7567 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7569 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7570 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7571 else, and returns nil.
7573 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7574 directory cannot be listed.
7576 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7578 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7579 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7580 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7581 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7584 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7585 It is available through the history command M-n.
7587 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7588 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7589 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7590 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7591 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7593 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7594 argument in this way.
7596 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7597 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7598 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7600 ** Echo area features
7602 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7603 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7604 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7605 after the echo area is cleared.
7607 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7608 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7610 ** Keyboard input features
7612 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7613 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7615 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7616 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7619 ** Frame-related changes
7621 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7622 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7623 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7625 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7626 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7627 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7629 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7630 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7631 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7632 in the selected frame.
7634 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7635 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7636 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7638 ** X Windows features
7640 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7641 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7642 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7644 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7645 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7647 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7648 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7649 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7651 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7652 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7654 ** Subprocess features
7656 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7657 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7660 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7661 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7663 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7664 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7666 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7667 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7669 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7670 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7671 goes after the other menu items.
7673 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7674 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7675 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7678 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7679 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7681 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7682 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7685 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7686 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7687 but its hook is still run.
7689 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7690 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7692 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7693 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7694 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7696 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7697 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7698 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7701 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7702 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7704 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7705 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7706 functions like display-time.
7708 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7709 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7711 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7712 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7713 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7715 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7716 if there is an error in compilation.
7718 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7719 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7720 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7721 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7723 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7724 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7725 the *scratch* buffer.
7727 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7728 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7729 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7730 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7732 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7733 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7734 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7736 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7737 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7738 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7739 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7741 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7742 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7743 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7745 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7746 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7747 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7748 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7749 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7752 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7753 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7754 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7755 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7757 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7758 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7759 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7760 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7762 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7764 ** imenu.el changes.
7766 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7767 item from menu created by imenu.
7769 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7770 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7771 select one of those items.
7773 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7775 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7777 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7778 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7780 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7781 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7782 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7784 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7786 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7787 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7789 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7790 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7791 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7792 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7793 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7796 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7797 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7799 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7800 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7801 as in previous Emacs versions.
7803 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7804 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7805 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7808 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7809 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7810 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7811 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7814 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7815 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7816 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7817 line and then executing the macro.
7819 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7821 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7822 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7823 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7828 *** Font Lock support modes
7830 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7831 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7832 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7833 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7834 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7836 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7838 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7844 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7845 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7846 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7847 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7848 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7849 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7850 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7852 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7854 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7856 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7858 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7860 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7863 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7868 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7869 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7870 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7871 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7873 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7874 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7876 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7877 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7880 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7881 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7883 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7885 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7887 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7889 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7892 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7894 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7896 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7898 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7900 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7903 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7905 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7907 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7909 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7911 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7913 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7915 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7917 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7920 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7922 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7925 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7927 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7928 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7930 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7932 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7934 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7936 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7938 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7941 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7943 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7944 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7946 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7947 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7948 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7950 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7951 articles with the `*' command.
7953 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7955 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7957 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7959 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7961 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7962 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7964 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7967 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7969 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7971 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7973 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7975 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7977 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7979 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7981 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7983 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7985 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7986 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7988 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7991 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7993 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7994 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7996 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7998 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
8000 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
8002 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
8005 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8007 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8009 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8010 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8012 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8014 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8016 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8018 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8020 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8022 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8025 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8027 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8028 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8029 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8032 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8035 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8038 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8039 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8042 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8043 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8044 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8045 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8046 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8049 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8051 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8053 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8054 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8055 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8056 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8057 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8059 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8060 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8061 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8063 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8065 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8066 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8067 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8068 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8069 chapter of the manual for details.
8071 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8072 customization variables take effect.
8074 ** Marking with the mouse.
8076 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8077 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8078 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8080 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8082 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8084 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8085 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8087 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8088 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8089 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8090 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8091 applications, these problems are significant.
8093 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8094 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8095 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8096 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8097 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8099 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8100 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8102 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8103 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8104 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8105 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8106 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8107 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8109 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8111 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8112 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8113 minibuffer contains.
8115 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8117 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8118 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8119 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8120 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8122 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8123 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8124 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8125 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8127 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8128 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8130 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8131 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8132 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8134 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8135 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8136 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8137 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8139 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8141 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8142 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8144 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8146 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8147 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8148 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8149 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8150 immediately after the selected one.
8152 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8153 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8155 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8157 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8158 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8159 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8160 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8163 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8164 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8167 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8168 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8169 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8170 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8171 now that the bug is fixed.
8173 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8175 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8176 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8177 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8178 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8180 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8181 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8182 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8183 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8185 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8186 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8187 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8189 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8190 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8191 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8192 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8195 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8196 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8198 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8199 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8200 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8201 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8203 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8204 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8205 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8206 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8207 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8208 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8210 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8211 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8212 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8213 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8215 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8216 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8217 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8219 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8220 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8221 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8222 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8223 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8224 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8225 to a limitation in font-lock).
8227 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8229 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8230 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8231 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8234 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8235 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8237 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8239 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8241 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8243 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8245 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8246 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8247 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8248 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8249 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8250 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8252 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8255 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8256 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8258 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8263 *** Global Font Lock mode
8265 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8266 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8267 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8268 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8269 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8271 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8273 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8277 *** Local Refontification
8279 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8280 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8281 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8282 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8284 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8285 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8286 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8287 above and below point.
8289 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8293 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8294 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8295 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8296 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8297 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8300 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8302 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8303 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8305 ** hide-show changes.
8307 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8308 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8311 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8312 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8314 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8315 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8316 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8320 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8321 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8323 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8324 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8326 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8328 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8329 pressing both mouse buttons.
8331 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8332 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8335 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8338 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8340 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8341 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8343 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8345 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8347 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8349 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8351 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8353 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8355 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8356 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8357 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8358 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8359 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8361 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8363 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8364 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8365 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8368 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8371 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8373 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8374 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8376 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8377 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8379 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8380 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8381 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8383 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8384 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8387 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8389 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8390 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8391 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8393 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8394 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8395 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8397 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8398 up if too much time passes.
8400 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8402 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8403 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8404 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8407 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8408 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8409 call looks like this:
8411 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8413 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8414 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8415 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8418 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8419 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8422 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8423 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8424 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8425 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8427 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8428 idle for SECS seconds.
8430 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8431 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8432 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8435 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8436 there is no answer within a certain time.
8438 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8440 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8441 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8442 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8444 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8445 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8446 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8447 arguments in between are ignored.
8449 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8450 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8452 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8453 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8454 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8455 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8458 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8459 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8460 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8461 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8462 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8463 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8465 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8466 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8467 systems with limited file name syntax.
8469 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8470 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8471 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8474 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8475 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8476 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8478 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8479 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8480 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8481 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8482 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8484 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8485 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8486 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8488 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8489 marker from its buffer position.
8491 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8492 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8493 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8495 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8496 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8497 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8498 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8499 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8500 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8502 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8503 errors that happen often during editing.
8505 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8506 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8507 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8509 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8510 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8512 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8513 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8514 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8515 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8516 and not get-buffer-window.
8518 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8519 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8520 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8522 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8523 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8524 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8525 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8526 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8527 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8528 over and over for the same text.
8530 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8532 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8533 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8535 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8538 in addition to the normal
8542 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8543 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8544 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8548 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8550 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8551 Copyright information:
8553 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8555 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8556 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8557 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8558 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8560 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8561 of this document, or of portions of it,
8562 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8563 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8567 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"