1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
14 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
15 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option to list them.
17 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
19 ** The new command `clone-buffer-indirectly' can be used to create
20 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer.
22 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
23 `make-backup-file-name-function' are provided to control the placement
24 of backups, typically in a single directory or in an invisible
27 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
28 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
30 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
31 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
34 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
35 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
38 ** New X resources recognized
40 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
41 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
42 is useful for debugging X problems.
46 emacs.synchronous: true
48 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
49 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
50 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
51 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
52 visual class names are
61 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
62 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
65 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
66 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
67 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
72 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
74 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
75 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
76 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
77 resource values are `true' or `on'.
81 emacs.privateColormap: true
83 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
84 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
85 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
87 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
88 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
89 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
92 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
94 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
95 all frames except the selected one.
97 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
98 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
100 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
101 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X either in the echo
102 area or with tooltips.
104 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
105 read mail from the menu etc.
107 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
109 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
113 -------------------------
120 ** Changes in Outline mode.
122 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
123 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
124 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
126 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
127 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
129 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
130 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
131 several other special buffers.
133 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
134 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
137 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
138 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
140 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
141 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
142 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
144 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
145 is running in batch mode. For example,
147 (message "%s" (read t))
149 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
152 ** Faces and frame parameters.
154 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
155 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
156 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
157 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
158 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
159 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
160 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
162 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
163 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
164 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
165 `default' face and vice versa.
169 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
170 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
171 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
173 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
175 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
176 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
177 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
178 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
180 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
181 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
182 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
184 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
187 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
189 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
190 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
191 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
192 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
195 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
197 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
198 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
199 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
200 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
203 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
204 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
205 under Lisp changes, below.
207 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
209 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
210 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
213 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
214 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
215 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
216 customizing face `fringe'.
218 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
219 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
223 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
224 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
226 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
228 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
229 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
230 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
231 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
232 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
235 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
236 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
237 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
238 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
239 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
240 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
242 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
243 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
244 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
245 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
246 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
247 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
249 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
250 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
251 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
252 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
253 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
255 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
257 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
258 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
259 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
261 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
263 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
264 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
265 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
266 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
267 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
272 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
273 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
277 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
278 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
279 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
282 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
284 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
285 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
286 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
289 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
290 have to do anything to activate it.
292 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
294 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
295 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
296 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
297 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
299 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
301 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
303 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
305 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
308 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
311 ** Hscrolling in C code.
313 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
317 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
318 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
320 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
322 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
323 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
324 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
325 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
326 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
328 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
330 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
333 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
334 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
336 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
338 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
339 toggles the read-only status.
341 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
343 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
345 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
346 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
349 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
351 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
352 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
353 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
354 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
355 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
356 attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
360 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
361 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
362 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
363 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
364 to enable sound support.
366 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
367 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
368 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
369 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
370 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
371 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
373 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
375 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
377 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
378 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
379 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
381 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
382 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
384 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
385 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
386 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
388 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
390 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
391 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
392 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
393 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
395 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
396 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
397 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
398 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
400 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
401 notably at the end of lines.
403 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
404 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
406 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
408 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
409 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
410 after each match to get the replacement text.
412 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
414 If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
415 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
416 on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
417 by setting the following variable:
419 - User option: max-mini-window-height
421 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
422 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
423 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
427 ** Changes to hideshow.el
429 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
430 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
432 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
434 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
435 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
436 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
437 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
438 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
439 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
441 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
442 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
443 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
444 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
446 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
448 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
449 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
450 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
451 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
452 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
454 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
455 something like this in your .emacs.
457 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
459 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
461 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
463 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
464 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
465 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
467 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
468 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
470 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
471 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
473 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
474 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
475 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
478 ** Changes in Font Lock
480 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
481 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
484 ** Comint (subshell) changes
486 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
487 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
489 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
490 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
491 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
493 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
494 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
495 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
497 ** Changes to Rmail mode
499 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
500 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
501 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
502 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
503 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
506 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
507 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
508 regexp matching your mail adresses.
510 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
511 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
512 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
513 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
514 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
516 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
519 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
520 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
523 ** Changes to TeX mode
525 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
528 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
530 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
531 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
532 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
533 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
534 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
535 can be edited from that buffer.
537 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
538 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
539 `A' to use all marked entries).
541 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
542 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
544 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
545 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
546 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
549 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
550 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
551 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
552 in column 1 are always made leaves.
554 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
555 has the following new features:
557 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
558 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
559 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
560 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
562 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
563 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
564 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
565 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
566 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
571 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
572 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
573 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
575 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
576 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
577 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
578 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
582 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
583 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
584 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
586 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
587 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
590 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
591 between custom options. Example:
593 (defcustom default-input-method nil
594 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
595 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
596 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
598 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
599 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
601 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
602 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
603 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
605 ** New features in evaluation commands
607 The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
608 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
609 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
610 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
611 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
615 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
616 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
617 is, delete only empty directories.
619 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
620 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
621 copy directories recursively.
623 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
624 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
625 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
627 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
628 use the -f option when sending mail.
632 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
633 current user setups (although it's believed that these
634 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
635 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
636 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
637 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
640 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
641 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
642 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
643 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
644 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
645 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
646 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
647 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
649 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
650 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
651 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
652 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
655 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
656 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
657 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
658 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
659 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
660 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
661 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
662 function documentation for more info.
664 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
665 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
666 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
667 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
668 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
669 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
670 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
671 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
673 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
675 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
676 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
678 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
679 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
680 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
681 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
682 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
685 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
686 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
687 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
690 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
691 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
692 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
693 chapter about this in the manual.
695 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
696 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
697 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
698 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
699 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
701 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
702 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
703 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
705 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
706 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
708 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
709 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
710 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
713 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
714 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
715 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
716 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
719 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
720 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
721 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
724 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
725 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
726 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
727 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
730 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
731 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
732 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
733 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
736 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
737 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
738 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
740 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
742 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
743 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
744 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
745 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
747 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
748 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
749 the column specified by comment-column.
751 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
752 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
753 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
754 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
755 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
756 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
758 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
759 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
762 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
764 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
765 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
766 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
767 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
770 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
772 ** Makefile mode changes
774 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
776 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
777 Fontlock mode is active.
781 ** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
782 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
783 that started the search.
785 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
786 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
788 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
790 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
791 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
792 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
793 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
794 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
795 `secondary-selection'.
797 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
798 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
799 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
800 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
801 usual snappy response.
803 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
804 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
805 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
806 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
808 ** Changes in sort.el
810 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
811 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
812 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
815 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
817 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
818 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
819 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
821 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
822 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
824 ** Shell script mode changes.
826 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
827 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
828 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
832 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
834 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
835 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
836 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
837 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
838 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
840 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
841 declarations when given the --declarations option.
843 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
844 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
846 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
849 *** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
851 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
853 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
856 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
857 variables are tagged.
859 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
861 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
864 ** Changes in etags.el
866 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
867 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
868 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
870 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
871 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
873 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
874 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
875 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
876 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
878 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
880 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
881 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
883 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
885 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
886 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
887 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
889 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
890 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
892 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
893 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
895 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
896 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
897 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
899 ** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
900 These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
901 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
902 currently no specific input method support for them.
904 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sqeuence-nos' to
905 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
906 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
908 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
910 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
912 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
913 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
914 expression from that list, are not checked.
916 ** New modes and packages
918 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
919 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
921 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
922 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
923 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
924 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
925 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
928 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
929 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
930 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
931 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
933 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
934 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
935 actually modifying content of a buffer.
937 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
940 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
942 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
944 ; comment (until end of line)
948 $A default non-terminal
949 $"C" default terminal
951 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
952 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
953 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
954 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
955 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
956 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
957 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
958 C+ one or more occurrences of C
959 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
960 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
961 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
962 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
963 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
964 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
965 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
967 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
969 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
970 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
971 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
972 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
973 equal signs of assignments.
975 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
976 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
978 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
979 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
980 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
981 customize the package.
983 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
984 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
985 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
986 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
987 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
988 which answers different needs.
990 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
991 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
992 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
993 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
994 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
997 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
998 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1000 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1002 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1004 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1006 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1009 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1012 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1014 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1016 *** whitespace.el ???
1018 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1019 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1020 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1021 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1022 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1023 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1024 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1026 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1028 Here is an example of columns:
1031 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1032 porcupine strawberry airplane
1034 Doing the following settings:
1036 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1037 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1038 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1039 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1042 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1044 M-x delimit-columns-region
1048 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1049 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1050 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1052 delim-col has the following options:
1054 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1057 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1058 between each column.
1060 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1063 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1066 delim-col has the following commands:
1068 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1069 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1071 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1072 were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
1073 is displayed in the "Files" menu.
1075 The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
1077 To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
1079 To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
1080 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
1082 To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
1083 M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
1085 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1088 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1089 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1090 specific to Message mode.
1092 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1093 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1094 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1096 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1097 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1098 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1100 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1101 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1105 ** Withdrawn packages
1107 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1108 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1110 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1112 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1114 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1116 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1117 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1118 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1119 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1121 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1122 argument function's results.
1124 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1125 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1127 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1128 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1130 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1131 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1133 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1134 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1137 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1138 nil don't display a cursor
1139 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1140 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1141 others display a box cursor.
1143 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1144 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1145 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1146 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1148 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1149 specificationa in string form as accepted my `modify-syntax-entry' to
1150 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1151 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1155 (string-to-syntax "()")
1158 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1161 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1162 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1169 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1174 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1179 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1186 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1187 the given property to obtain a a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1190 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1191 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1192 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1193 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1196 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1198 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1199 for a regexp in a string.
1201 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1202 `mouse-position-function'.
1204 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1205 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1207 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1208 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1211 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1214 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1215 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1218 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1219 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1220 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1221 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1225 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1226 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1229 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1230 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1231 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1232 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1235 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1236 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1237 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1238 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1241 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1242 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1243 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1246 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1247 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1250 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1252 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1253 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1254 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1258 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1259 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1262 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1263 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1266 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1267 instead of being optional.
1270 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1271 modify read-only text.
1274 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1276 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1277 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1278 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1279 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1280 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1282 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1283 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1284 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1285 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1286 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1287 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1288 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1291 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1292 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1293 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1297 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1298 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1301 ** New function `propertize'
1303 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1304 strings with text properties.
1306 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1308 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1309 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1310 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1311 specified value of that property. Example:
1313 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1316 ** push and pop macros.
1318 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1319 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1320 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1322 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1323 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1324 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1326 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1328 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1329 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1331 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1332 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1333 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1334 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1336 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1337 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1338 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1339 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1342 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1343 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1345 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1346 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1347 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1348 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1349 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1351 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1353 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1354 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1355 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1356 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1357 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1358 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1359 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1360 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1361 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1362 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1363 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1364 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1365 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1366 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1367 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1370 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1372 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1374 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1376 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1377 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1381 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1382 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1383 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1387 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1388 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1390 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1392 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1393 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1394 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1395 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1396 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1398 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1400 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1401 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1402 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1406 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
1407 Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
1408 their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
1409 hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1411 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1413 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1415 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1417 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1419 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1421 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1424 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1426 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1428 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1430 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1432 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1434 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1436 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1438 Returns the size of TABLE.
1440 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1442 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1444 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1446 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1448 - Function: clrhash TABLE
1452 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1454 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1457 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
1459 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1460 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1462 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1464 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1466 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1468 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1469 arguments KEY and VALUE.
1471 - Function: sxhash OBJ
1473 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1475 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1477 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1478 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
1479 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
1480 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1481 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1483 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1485 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1486 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1487 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1489 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1490 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1492 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1493 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1495 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1496 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1498 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
1499 'case-fold-string-hash))
1501 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1504 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1506 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1507 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1508 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1511 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1513 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1514 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1517 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
1518 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
1519 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
1520 is too short to reach that column.
1523 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
1524 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
1525 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
1526 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
1528 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
1529 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
1530 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
1533 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
1534 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
1537 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
1538 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
1541 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
1542 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
1543 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
1544 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
1545 temporary-file-directory instead.
1548 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
1549 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
1550 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
1551 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
1554 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
1555 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
1558 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
1560 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
1561 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
1562 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
1565 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
1567 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
1568 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
1569 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
1570 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
1571 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
1572 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
1574 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
1575 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
1576 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
1577 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
1580 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
1582 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
1583 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
1584 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
1587 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
1588 string where arguments appear in the result string.
1592 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
1594 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
1595 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
1598 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
1601 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
1603 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
1604 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
1607 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
1609 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
1610 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
1616 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
1617 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
1619 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
1620 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
1621 to enable sound support.
1623 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
1624 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
1625 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
1626 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
1627 sound to play, before playing the sound.
1629 The following sound properties are supported:
1633 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
1634 searched relative to `data-directory'.
1638 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
1639 may be present, but not both.
1643 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
1644 0..1. This property is optional.
1646 Other properties are ignored.
1648 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
1650 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
1653 ** Changes to garbage collection
1655 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
1656 of live and free strings.
1658 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
1659 strings that have been consed so far.
1662 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
1664 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1665 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1666 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1667 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1669 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
1670 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
1672 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
1673 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
1674 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
1675 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
1676 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
1677 just display it black instead.
1679 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
1682 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
1686 ** New face implementation.
1688 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
1689 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
1694 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
1696 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
1698 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
1699 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
1701 3. Font height in 1/10pt
1703 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
1705 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
1707 6. Foreground color.
1709 7. Background color.
1711 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
1713 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
1715 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
1717 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
1719 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
1722 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
1723 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
1725 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
1726 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
1727 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
1728 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
1729 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
1730 attributes mentioned above.
1732 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
1733 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
1736 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
1737 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
1743 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
1744 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
1745 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
1746 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
1747 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
1748 results in a fully-specified face.
1751 *** Face realization.
1753 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
1754 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
1755 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
1756 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
1757 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
1758 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
1760 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
1761 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
1762 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
1763 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
1765 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
1766 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
1767 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
1768 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
1769 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
1771 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
1772 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
1773 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
1774 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
1775 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
1778 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
1779 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
1780 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
1781 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
1784 **** Clearing face caches.
1786 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
1787 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
1793 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
1794 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
1795 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
1797 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1798 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1799 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1800 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1801 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1803 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1804 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1805 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1807 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1809 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1810 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1811 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1812 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1813 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1814 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1815 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1817 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1818 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1824 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1825 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1828 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
1829 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
1830 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1831 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1832 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1835 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1837 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1840 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1842 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1844 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1845 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1846 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1848 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1849 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1850 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1851 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1852 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1853 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1854 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1855 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1856 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1857 of the face font sort order.
1859 - Function: x-font-family-list
1861 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1862 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1863 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1864 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1866 - Variable: font-list-limit
1868 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1869 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1870 matching font. The default is currently 100.
1873 *** Setting face attributes.
1875 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1876 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1877 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1880 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1881 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1883 The following attributes are recognized:
1887 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1888 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1889 and `?' are allowed.
1893 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1894 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1895 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1896 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1900 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
1905 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1906 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1907 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1911 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1912 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1915 `:foreground', `:background'
1917 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1921 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1922 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1923 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1928 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1929 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1930 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1935 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1936 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1937 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1938 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1942 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1943 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1944 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1945 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1946 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1947 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1948 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1949 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1950 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1951 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1952 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1953 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1954 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1955 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1956 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1957 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1962 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1963 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1967 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1968 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1969 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1970 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1971 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1972 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1974 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1975 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1979 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1980 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1981 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1984 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1985 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1986 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1988 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1991 *** Face attributes and X resources
1993 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1996 Face attribute X resource class
1997 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
1998 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1999 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2000 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2001 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2002 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2003 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2004 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2005 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2006 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2007 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2008 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2009 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2010 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2011 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2012 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2013 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2014 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2015 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2016 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2019 *** Text property `face'.
2021 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2022 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2023 specification can be
2025 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2027 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2028 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2029 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2030 for face attribute names.
2032 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2033 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2034 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2037 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2039 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2040 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2041 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2042 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2043 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2044 used to clear the mapping table.
2046 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2048 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2049 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2050 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2051 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2052 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2053 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2054 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2055 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2056 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2057 modify their color-related behavior.
2059 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2062 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2064 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2065 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2066 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2067 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2068 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2069 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2070 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2071 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2072 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2075 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2077 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2079 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2080 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2081 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2083 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2085 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2086 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2089 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2090 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2091 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2092 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2093 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2094 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2095 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2098 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2099 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2100 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2102 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2104 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
2106 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2107 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2108 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2109 constrained position if that is is different.
2111 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2112 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2113 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2114 constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
2115 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2116 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2119 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2120 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2121 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2122 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2123 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2125 - Function: erase-field &optional POS
2127 Erases the field surrounding POS.
2128 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2129 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2131 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2133 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2134 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2135 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2136 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
2137 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2139 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2141 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2142 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2143 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2144 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
2145 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2147 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2149 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2150 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2151 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2153 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2155 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2156 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2157 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2162 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2163 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2164 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2165 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2167 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2168 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2169 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2170 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2173 IMAGE is an image specification.
2175 *** Image specifications
2177 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2178 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2179 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2180 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2181 described below are ignored.
2183 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2187 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
2188 of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
2192 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2193 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2197 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2202 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2203 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2204 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2205 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2207 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2209 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2210 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2211 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2212 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2213 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2214 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2215 background of the image.
2219 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2220 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2221 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2222 may be present in the image specification.
2226 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2227 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2228 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2229 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2231 *** Supported image types
2233 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2235 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2236 properties supported are
2240 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2241 is the frame's foreground.
2245 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2246 the frame's background color.
2248 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2249 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2250 instead of a `:file' property.
2254 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2258 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2264 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2265 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2267 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2269 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2272 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2274 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2275 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2276 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2277 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2279 Additional image properties supported are:
2281 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2283 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2284 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2287 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2288 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2290 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2291 to display compressed images.
2293 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2295 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2296 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2299 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2301 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2302 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2305 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2307 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2308 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2311 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2313 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2314 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2316 Additional image properties supported are:
2320 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2321 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2323 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2324 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2325 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2328 (defun show-anim (file max)
2329 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2330 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2332 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2335 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2338 (goto-char (point-min))
2339 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2340 (insert-image img "x"))
2341 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2343 **** PNG, image type `png'
2345 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2346 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2349 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2351 Additional image properties supported are:
2355 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2356 integer. This is a required property.
2360 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2361 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2365 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2366 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2367 files. This is an required property.
2369 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2374 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2375 which are supported in the current configuration.
2377 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2378 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2379 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2382 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2384 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2385 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2386 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2387 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2388 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2394 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2397 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2398 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2399 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2400 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2401 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2402 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2403 of the display margins.
2405 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2406 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2407 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2408 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2414 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2415 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2416 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2417 that have a `help-echo' property.
2419 The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
2420 items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
2421 If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
2422 evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
2423 tool-bar item is used.
2425 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
2426 help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
2427 help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
2430 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
2432 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
2433 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
2435 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
2436 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
2437 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
2438 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
2441 (global-set-key [A-down]
2444 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2445 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
2446 (global-set-key [A-up]
2449 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2450 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
2453 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
2455 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
2456 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
2457 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
2458 is called with one argument, POS.
2460 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
2461 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
2462 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
2463 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
2464 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
2467 ** Tool bar support.
2469 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
2470 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
2471 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
2472 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
2473 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
2474 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
2476 *** Tool bar item definitions
2478 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
2479 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
2480 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
2482 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
2483 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
2484 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
2485 property (see below).
2487 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
2488 binding are currently ignored.
2490 The following properties are recognized:
2494 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
2499 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
2503 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
2504 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
2505 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
2507 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
2509 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
2510 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
2514 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
2515 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
2516 meaning of each of the four elements:
2518 Index Use when item is
2519 ----------------------------------------
2520 0 enabled and selected
2521 1 enabled and deselected
2522 2 disabled and selected
2523 3 disabled and deselected
2525 `:help HELP-STRING'.
2527 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
2528 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
2530 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
2532 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
2533 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
2534 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
2536 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
2537 raised when the mouse moves over them.
2539 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
2540 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
2541 pixels. Default is 1.
2543 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
2544 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
2546 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
2548 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
2551 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
2552 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
2553 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
2555 is the original tool bar item definition, then
2557 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
2559 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
2562 ** Mode line changes.
2565 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
2567 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
2568 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
2569 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
2571 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
2572 a `local-map' text property.
2574 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
2575 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
2577 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
2578 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
2579 `local-map' property.
2581 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
2582 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
2585 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
2586 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
2589 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
2590 variable mode-line-format to nil.
2593 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
2595 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
2596 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
2597 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
2598 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
2601 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
2604 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
2605 position in the header-line.
2608 ** Text property `display'
2610 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
2611 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
2612 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
2613 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
2615 *** Variable width and height spaces
2617 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
2618 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
2619 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
2620 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
2621 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
2622 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
2623 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
2625 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
2626 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
2627 properties described below.
2629 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
2630 characters having the `display' property.
2634 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
2635 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
2637 - :relative-width FACTOR
2639 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
2640 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
2641 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
2642 width of that character by FACTOR.
2646 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
2647 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
2649 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
2653 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
2656 - :relative-height FACTOR
2658 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
2659 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
2663 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
2664 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
2665 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
2668 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
2672 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
2673 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
2674 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
2675 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
2676 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
2677 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
2678 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
2679 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
2680 as display specification.
2682 *** Other display properties
2684 - :space-width FACTOR
2686 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
2687 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
2692 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
2694 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
2695 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
2696 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
2697 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
2698 a font is available counts as a step.
2700 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
2701 as tall as the frame's default font.
2703 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
2704 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
2706 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
2707 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
2711 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
2712 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
2713 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
2714 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
2715 `:height' subproperty.
2717 *** Conditional display properties
2719 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
2720 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
2721 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
2722 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
2723 the text having the `display' property.
2725 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
2729 ** New menu separator types.
2731 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
2732 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
2733 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
2734 to specify other menu separator types.
2736 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
2738 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
2741 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
2743 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
2745 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
2747 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
2749 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
2751 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2753 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
2755 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2757 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
2759 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
2760 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
2762 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
2764 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
2766 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
2768 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
2770 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
2772 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
2774 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
2776 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2778 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
2780 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
2782 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
2784 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2786 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
2788 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
2790 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
2791 the corresponding single-line separators.
2794 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
2796 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
2797 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
2798 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
2799 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
2800 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
2801 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
2802 default foreground is black.
2804 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
2805 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
2806 `ScrollBarBackground').
2808 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
2809 settings for scroll bar colors.
2812 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
2813 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
2816 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
2817 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
2818 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
2819 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
2820 the original window start.
2823 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
2824 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
2825 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
2828 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
2830 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
2831 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
2832 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
2833 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
2835 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
2836 fixed-width and fixed-height.
2838 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
2840 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
2841 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
2842 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
2843 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
2844 temporarily to nil, for example
2846 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
2847 (enlarge-window 10))
2849 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
2850 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
2852 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
2853 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
2854 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
2855 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
2856 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
2857 support a vertical-bar cursor).
2859 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
2861 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
2862 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
2864 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
2866 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
2868 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
2869 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
2870 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
2872 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
2873 is the one that is used.
2875 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
2876 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
2877 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
2878 separate from the command's regular output.
2879 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
2880 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
2881 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
2884 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
2885 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
2886 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
2887 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
2889 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
2890 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
2891 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
2892 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
2894 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
2895 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
2896 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
2897 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
2899 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
2900 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
2901 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
2902 they never ignore case.
2904 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
2905 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
2906 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
2907 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
2908 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
2909 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
2910 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
2912 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
2913 the same format that was used in the file before.
2915 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
2916 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
2918 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
2919 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
2920 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
2922 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
2923 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
2924 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2925 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2926 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2927 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2928 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2930 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2931 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2932 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2933 format. You can now customize these variables.
2935 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2936 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2937 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2938 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2940 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2941 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2942 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2944 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2945 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2946 doesn't have any effect.
2948 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2951 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2952 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2953 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2955 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2956 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2957 `auto-show-mode' command.
2959 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2960 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2961 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2962 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2963 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2965 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2966 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2968 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2969 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2970 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2972 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2973 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2974 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2975 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2977 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2979 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2980 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2981 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2982 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2983 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2985 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2986 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2988 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2989 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2990 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2991 `?' on other systems.
2993 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2994 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2997 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2998 current codepage when it starts.
3002 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3003 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3004 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3005 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3006 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3007 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3011 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3012 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3014 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3015 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3016 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3017 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3018 buffer-file-coding-system.
3020 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3021 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3024 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3025 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3026 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3027 list of possible coding systems.
3031 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3032 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3033 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3034 docstring for details.
3036 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3037 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3038 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3039 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3040 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3042 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3043 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3045 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3046 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3048 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3049 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3050 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3051 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3054 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3055 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3057 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3058 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3059 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3060 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3062 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3063 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3064 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3065 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3066 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3068 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3070 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3072 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3073 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3075 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3077 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3078 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3079 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3080 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3081 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3085 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3086 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3087 Gnus manual for the full story.
3089 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3090 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3091 group, which is created automatically.
3093 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3096 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3098 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3099 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3101 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3104 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3106 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3107 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3109 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3111 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3112 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3114 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3115 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3117 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3118 control over simplification.
3120 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3122 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3125 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3127 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3129 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3130 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3131 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3133 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3134 `a' forces normal posting method.
3136 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3139 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3142 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3143 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3145 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3148 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3150 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3152 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3153 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3155 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3156 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3158 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3160 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3163 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3164 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3166 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3167 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3169 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3171 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3173 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3175 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3177 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3178 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3179 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3181 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3182 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3183 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3184 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3185 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3187 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3188 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3189 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3190 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3192 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3193 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3194 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3197 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3199 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3200 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3202 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3203 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3204 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3205 removed from the label.
3207 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3208 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3210 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3211 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3213 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3214 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3217 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3219 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3221 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3222 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3224 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3225 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3226 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3228 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3229 changes with a special face.
3231 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3232 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3233 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3235 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3237 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3238 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3239 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3240 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3241 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3243 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3244 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3245 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3247 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3248 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3249 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3250 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3251 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3252 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3253 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3254 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3255 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3257 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3258 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3259 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3260 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3261 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3264 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3265 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3266 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3267 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3268 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3269 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3271 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3272 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3273 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3274 was not documented clearly before.
3276 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3277 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3279 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3281 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3282 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3283 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3284 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3286 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3287 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3288 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3290 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3292 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3293 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3295 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3296 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3299 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3300 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3301 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3302 file names and attributes are returned.
3304 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3305 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3306 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3307 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3310 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3311 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3313 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3315 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3316 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3317 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3320 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3321 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3324 The new function process-running-child-p
3325 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3326 terminal to its own child process.
3328 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3329 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3330 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3331 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3333 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3334 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3336 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3337 :included is an alias for :visible.
3339 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3340 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3341 to move or copy menu entries.
3343 ** Multibyte editing changes
3345 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3346 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3347 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3348 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3349 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3350 (setq char (sref str idx)
3351 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3352 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3354 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3355 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3356 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3358 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3359 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3360 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3362 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3364 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3365 across the boundary.
3367 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3368 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3369 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3370 contains 8-bit characters.
3371 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3372 contains invalid characters.
3374 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3375 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3376 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3377 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3380 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3381 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3382 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3383 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3385 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3386 compose Thai characters in a string.
3388 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3389 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3390 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
3391 menus should always use the third argument.
3393 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
3394 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
3395 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
3396 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
3398 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
3399 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
3400 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
3401 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
3403 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
3404 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
3405 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
3408 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
3410 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
3411 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
3412 requested feature cannot be loaded.
3414 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
3415 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
3416 means to clear out that attribute.
3418 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
3419 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
3421 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
3422 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
3423 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
3424 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
3426 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
3427 the gap of the current buffer.
3429 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
3430 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
3433 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
3434 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
3435 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
3436 it back in after any modifications have been made.
3438 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
3440 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
3441 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
3442 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
3443 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
3444 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
3446 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
3447 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
3448 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
3449 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
3450 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
3452 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
3453 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
3454 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
3456 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
3457 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
3458 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
3459 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
3460 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
3463 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
3464 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
3465 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
3466 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
3468 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
3470 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
3471 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
3472 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
3473 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
3475 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
3476 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
3477 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
3478 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
3479 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
3480 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
3481 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
3484 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
3487 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
3488 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
3489 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
3490 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
3491 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
3493 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
3494 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
3495 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
3496 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
3498 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
3499 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
3500 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
3501 something that most users not do.
3503 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
3504 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
3505 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
3508 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
3511 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
3512 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
3513 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
3514 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
3517 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
3518 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
3519 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
3520 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
3521 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
3524 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
3525 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
3526 to be confused by TeX commands.
3528 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
3529 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
3530 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
3531 of various alternative replacements and actions.
3533 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
3534 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
3535 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
3536 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
3537 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
3539 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
3540 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
3542 ** Changes in input method usage.
3544 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
3545 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
3548 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
3550 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
3551 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
3553 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
3554 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
3556 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
3558 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
3560 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
3561 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
3563 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
3564 given in the following case:
3565 o When you are using a complex input method.
3566 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
3568 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
3569 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
3570 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
3571 setting it to t is helpful.
3573 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
3575 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
3577 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
3578 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
3579 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
3580 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
3583 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
3584 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
3585 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
3588 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
3590 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
3592 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
3593 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
3595 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
3596 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
3597 its owner and group.
3599 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
3600 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
3602 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
3603 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
3605 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
3606 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
3607 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
3608 by the left edge of the rectangle.
3610 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
3611 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
3612 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
3613 for writing keyboard macros.
3615 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
3616 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
3617 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
3618 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
3619 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
3622 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
3624 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
3625 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
3628 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
3629 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
3630 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
3631 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
3633 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
3634 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
3635 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
3637 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
3638 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
3639 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
3640 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
3642 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
3643 failure if the command produces no output.
3645 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
3646 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
3649 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
3650 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
3651 function and variable names.
3653 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
3654 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
3655 file-coding-system-alist.
3657 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
3658 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
3659 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
3660 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
3661 according to the current fontset.
3663 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
3665 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
3666 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
3667 nonascii-insert-offset.
3669 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
3670 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
3671 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
3672 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
3674 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
3675 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
3677 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
3678 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
3680 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
3681 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
3684 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
3685 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
3687 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
3688 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
3689 all variables that have documentation.
3691 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
3692 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
3693 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
3694 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
3695 it should show; the default is 20.
3697 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
3698 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
3701 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
3702 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
3703 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
3704 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
3705 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
3706 Newly added options are included as well.
3708 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
3709 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
3710 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
3712 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
3715 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
3716 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
3718 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
3719 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
3722 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
3723 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
3726 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
3727 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
3728 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
3729 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
3732 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
3734 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
3735 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
3736 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
3738 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
3739 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
3740 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
3743 ** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
3744 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
3746 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
3747 read and post multi-lingual articles.
3749 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
3750 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
3751 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
3752 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
3753 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
3754 made invisible again.
3756 ** Mail reading and sending changes
3758 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
3759 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
3760 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
3763 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
3764 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
3765 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
3766 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
3767 rmail-default-body-file.
3769 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
3770 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
3771 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
3773 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
3774 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
3775 is evaluated to insert the signature.
3777 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
3778 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
3779 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
3780 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
3781 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
3782 especially interested in trying feedmail.
3784 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
3785 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
3786 provided by feedmail are:
3788 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
3789 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
3790 there is also a queue for draft messages
3792 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
3793 be prompted for confirmation
3795 **** does smart filling of address headers
3797 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
3798 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
3799 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
3801 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
3802 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
3803 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
3804 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
3808 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
3809 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
3811 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
3812 run Dired on the directory name at point.
3814 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
3815 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
3816 for a specified regexp.
3820 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
3823 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
3824 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
3827 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
3828 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
3829 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
3830 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
3832 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
3833 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
3834 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
3835 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
3836 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
3838 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
3839 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
3840 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
3841 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
3842 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
3844 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
3845 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
3846 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
3847 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
3849 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
3850 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
3851 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
3853 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
3854 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
3855 session to resolve them.
3857 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
3858 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
3859 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
3862 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
3863 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
3864 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
3865 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
3866 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
3867 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
3870 ** Changes in Font Lock
3872 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
3873 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
3874 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
3875 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
3876 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
3878 ** Frame name display changes
3880 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
3881 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
3882 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
3883 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
3885 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
3886 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
3889 ** Comint (subshell) changes
3891 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
3892 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
3893 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
3895 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
3897 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
3898 that is, the line after the last line you got.
3899 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
3901 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
3902 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
3905 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
3906 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
3907 previously sent input.
3909 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
3910 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
3911 as the search string.
3913 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
3914 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
3918 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
3919 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
3920 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
3923 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
3924 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
3925 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
3926 style is still the default however.
3928 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
3930 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
3931 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
3932 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
3934 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
3935 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
3937 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3938 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3940 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3941 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3943 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3944 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3946 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3947 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3948 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3949 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3951 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
3953 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
3954 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3955 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3957 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3958 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3959 expanding dynamically.
3961 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3962 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3964 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3965 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3966 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3967 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3969 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3971 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3973 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3974 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3975 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3976 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3977 against the first word in the title.
3979 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3980 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3981 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
3982 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
3983 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
3984 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
3986 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3987 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3988 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3989 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3991 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
3993 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3994 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3995 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3996 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3997 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3998 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4000 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4001 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4003 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4004 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4005 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4007 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4008 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4012 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4013 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4014 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4016 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4017 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4018 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4019 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4022 o URLs are automatically skipped
4023 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4025 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4027 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4029 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4030 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4031 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4032 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4034 *** New recursive parser.
4036 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4037 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4038 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4040 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4042 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4043 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4044 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4046 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4048 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4050 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4052 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4054 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4056 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4057 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4059 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4061 *** References to external documents.
4063 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4064 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4065 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4066 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4067 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4068 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4069 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4071 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4073 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4074 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4076 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4077 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4079 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4081 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4082 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4084 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4086 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4087 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4088 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4089 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4090 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4091 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4094 *** Support for the varioref package
4096 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4100 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4101 and citations are created. These hooks are
4102 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4103 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4105 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4107 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4108 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4110 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4112 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4113 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4116 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4118 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4119 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4120 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4121 directories that contain the same file name.
4123 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4124 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4125 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4126 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4127 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4128 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4129 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4132 ** New modes and packages
4134 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4135 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4136 it, but some do not.
4138 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4141 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4142 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4145 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4147 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4148 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4149 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4150 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4152 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4153 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4154 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4156 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4157 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4158 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4159 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4160 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4163 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4164 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4166 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4167 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4168 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4169 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4171 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4173 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4174 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4175 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4176 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4177 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4178 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4179 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4180 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4181 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4182 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4183 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4185 Platform-specific modes:
4187 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4188 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4189 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4190 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4191 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4192 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4193 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4194 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4195 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4197 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4199 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4200 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4201 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4202 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4204 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4205 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4206 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4208 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4209 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4210 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4211 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4213 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4214 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4215 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4218 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4219 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4220 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4221 current input method for reading this one event.
4223 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4224 now control whether to output certain characters as
4225 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4226 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4227 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4228 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4230 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4232 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4233 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4235 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4236 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4237 always increases point by 1.
4239 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4240 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4242 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4244 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4245 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4246 default value changed. For example,
4248 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4253 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4256 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4257 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4258 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4259 `:version' in the top level group.
4261 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4263 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4264 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4266 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4267 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4268 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4271 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4272 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4275 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4276 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4277 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4279 ** Frame-local variables.
4281 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4282 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4283 local bindings for that variable.
4285 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4286 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4287 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4290 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4291 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4292 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4293 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4295 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4296 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4297 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4298 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4300 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4301 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4302 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4303 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4304 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4306 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4307 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4308 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4309 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4311 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4312 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4314 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4315 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4316 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4318 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4319 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4320 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4321 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4323 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4324 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4327 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4328 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4329 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4330 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4331 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4333 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4334 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4335 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4336 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4338 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4339 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4340 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4341 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4342 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4344 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4345 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4346 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4347 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4349 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4350 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4351 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4353 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4354 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4355 was directed to display this buffer.
4357 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4358 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4359 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4360 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4361 set-window-configuration.
4363 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4364 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4365 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4366 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4368 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4369 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4370 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4372 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4373 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4374 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4376 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4377 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4379 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4380 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4382 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4383 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4384 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4386 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
4387 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
4388 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
4389 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
4393 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
4394 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
4397 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
4398 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
4399 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
4400 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
4401 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
4403 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
4405 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
4406 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
4407 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
4408 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
4411 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
4412 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
4413 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
4414 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
4415 The supported properties include
4417 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4419 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4420 item should appear in the menu.
4422 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
4423 which will be REAL-BINDING.
4424 It should return a binding to use instead.
4426 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
4427 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
4428 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
4429 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
4430 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
4433 This means that the command normally has no
4434 keyboard equivalent.
4435 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
4436 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
4437 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
4438 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
4439 value says whether this button is currently selected.
4441 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
4442 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
4444 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
4448 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
4449 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
4450 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
4451 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
4453 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
4455 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4456 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
4457 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
4458 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
4459 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
4460 forward, away from the user.
4462 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4464 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
4465 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
4466 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
4467 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
4468 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
4470 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
4472 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4473 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
4474 that were dragged and dropped.
4476 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4478 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
4480 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
4481 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
4482 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
4484 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
4485 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
4486 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
4488 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
4489 in Emacs 19 and before.
4491 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
4492 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
4494 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
4495 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
4496 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
4497 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
4499 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
4500 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
4501 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
4502 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
4503 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
4505 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
4506 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
4507 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
4508 consistent with the new representation.
4510 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
4511 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
4512 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
4513 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4515 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
4516 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
4517 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
4519 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
4520 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
4521 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4523 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
4524 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
4525 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
4527 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4528 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
4530 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4531 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
4533 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
4534 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
4535 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
4536 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
4538 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
4539 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
4541 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
4542 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
4543 buffer or string being searched.
4545 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
4546 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
4547 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
4548 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
4549 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
4550 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
4551 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
4553 *** Structure of coding system changed.
4555 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
4556 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
4557 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
4558 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
4559 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
4560 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
4561 define-coding-system-alias.
4563 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
4564 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
4565 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
4566 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
4567 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
4568 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
4569 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
4572 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
4573 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
4574 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
4575 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
4577 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
4578 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
4579 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
4580 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
4582 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
4583 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
4584 This function requires a user interaction.
4586 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
4587 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
4588 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
4589 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
4590 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
4591 select-safe-coding-system.
4593 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
4594 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
4595 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
4598 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
4599 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
4600 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
4602 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
4603 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
4604 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
4605 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
4607 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
4608 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
4609 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
4612 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
4613 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
4615 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
4616 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
4617 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
4618 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
4619 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
4620 range of characters.
4622 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
4623 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
4625 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
4626 in the current buffer at position POS.
4628 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
4629 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
4630 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
4631 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
4632 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
4633 binding input-method-function to nil.
4635 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
4636 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
4637 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
4638 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
4639 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
4641 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
4642 subsequent events of a key sequence.
4644 *** You can customize any language environment by using
4645 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
4647 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
4648 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
4649 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
4650 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
4651 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
4653 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
4655 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
4656 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
4657 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
4660 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
4661 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
4663 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
4664 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
4665 in your .emacs file.)
4667 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
4668 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
4670 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
4671 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
4673 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
4674 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
4677 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
4678 delete the character before point, as usual.
4680 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
4681 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
4682 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
4684 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
4685 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
4686 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
4687 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
4688 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
4691 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
4692 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
4693 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
4694 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
4695 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
4697 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
4698 and is an alias for it.
4700 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
4701 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
4703 ** Scrolling changes
4705 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
4706 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
4708 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
4709 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
4712 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
4713 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
4714 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
4715 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
4717 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
4718 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
4719 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
4720 recenters the window.
4722 ** International character set support (MULE)
4724 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
4725 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
4726 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
4727 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
4728 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
4729 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
4731 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
4732 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
4733 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
4734 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
4735 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
4737 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
4738 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
4739 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
4740 language, to make it possible to type them.
4742 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
4743 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
4745 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
4746 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
4748 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
4750 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
4752 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
4753 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
4754 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
4755 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
4756 characters for their work until they want to change.
4760 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
4761 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
4762 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
4763 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
4764 support several input methods.
4766 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
4767 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
4770 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
4771 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
4772 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
4773 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
4774 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
4777 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
4778 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
4779 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
4780 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
4781 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
4783 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
4784 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
4785 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
4786 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
4788 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
4789 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
4790 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
4791 the first guess is wrong.
4793 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
4794 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
4796 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
4797 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
4798 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
4799 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
4801 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
4802 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
4803 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
4804 translate automatically to and from either one.
4806 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
4808 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
4809 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
4810 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
4813 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
4814 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
4815 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
4816 multibyte characters in that buffer.
4818 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
4819 character conversion as well.
4821 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
4823 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
4824 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
4825 requires using many fonts.
4827 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
4828 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
4830 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
4831 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
4832 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
4833 you would use a font.
4835 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
4836 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
4837 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
4839 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
4840 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
4841 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
4842 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
4843 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
4845 *** Defining fontsets.
4847 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
4848 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
4849 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
4851 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
4852 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
4853 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
4854 standard fontset are created automatically.
4856 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
4857 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
4858 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
4859 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
4860 name is `fontset-startup'.
4862 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
4863 The resource value should have this form:
4864 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
4865 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
4866 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
4867 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
4868 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
4869 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
4870 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
4871 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
4872 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
4874 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
4875 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
4876 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
4878 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
4879 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
4881 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
4882 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
4883 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
4884 Here is the substitution rule:
4885 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
4886 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
4887 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
4888 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
4889 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
4891 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
4892 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
4893 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
4895 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
4896 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
4897 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
4898 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
4901 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
4902 defaults for a particular choice of language.
4904 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
4905 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
4906 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
4907 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
4908 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
4909 system for new files that you create.
4911 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
4912 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
4913 whole Emacs session.
4915 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
4916 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
4917 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
4919 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
4920 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
4921 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
4922 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
4923 coding systems that Emacs supports.
4925 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
4926 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
4927 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
4928 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
4929 is used for *the immediately following command*.
4931 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
4932 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
4934 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
4935 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
4937 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4938 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4940 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4941 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4942 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4943 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4946 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4947 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4948 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4949 translated into that character code.
4951 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4952 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4954 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4956 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4957 the coding system for keyboard input.
4959 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4960 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4961 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4963 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4965 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4966 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4967 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4968 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4969 designed to work with terminals.
4971 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4972 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4973 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4974 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4975 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4976 in the corresponding buffer.
4978 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4980 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4981 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4982 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4984 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4985 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4986 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4989 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4990 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4992 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4993 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4994 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4995 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4997 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4998 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4999 related information.
5001 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5002 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5005 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5006 information about the support for a particular language.
5007 You specify the language as an argument.
5009 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5010 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5013 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5014 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5015 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5016 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5018 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5020 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5021 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5022 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5023 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5024 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5025 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5026 K euc-korea (Korean)
5029 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5032 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5033 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5034 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5038 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5039 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5040 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5041 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5043 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5044 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5046 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5047 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5048 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5049 Rmail files themselves.
5051 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5052 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5054 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5057 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5058 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5059 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5060 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5061 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5063 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5064 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5065 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5068 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5069 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5070 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5071 without any conversion.
5073 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5074 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5075 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5076 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5078 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5079 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5081 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5082 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5084 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5085 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5087 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5088 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5089 in the buffer before point.
5091 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5092 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5095 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5096 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5098 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5100 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5101 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5103 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5104 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5105 can become a bottleneck.
5107 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5108 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5109 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5110 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5111 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5112 so useful that the change is worth while.
5114 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5115 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5116 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5117 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5119 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5120 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5123 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5124 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5125 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5127 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5128 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5129 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5131 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5132 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5133 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5135 ** Changes in View mode.
5137 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5138 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5140 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5141 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5143 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5146 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5147 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5149 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5150 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5151 not just the selected window.
5153 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5154 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5155 turns View mode on or off.
5157 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5158 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5159 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5161 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5162 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5164 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5165 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5166 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5167 which version to compare with.
5169 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5170 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5172 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5173 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5174 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5175 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5177 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5178 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5179 blocks, all of them or none.
5181 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5182 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5185 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5186 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5187 However, the mode will not be changed if
5188 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5189 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5190 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5191 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5193 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5195 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5196 these commands do not change the major mode.
5198 ** M-x occur changes.
5200 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5201 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5203 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5204 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5205 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5207 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5208 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5209 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5210 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5211 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5213 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5214 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5215 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5216 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5218 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5219 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5220 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5222 ** Outline mode changes.
5224 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5226 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5228 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5229 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5230 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5233 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5234 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5237 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5238 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5240 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5242 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5243 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5244 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5245 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5247 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5248 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5249 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5251 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5252 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5255 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5256 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5257 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5258 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5260 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5261 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5262 can be. The default value is 30.
5264 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5266 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5267 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5268 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5269 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5270 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5273 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5274 compose-mail-other-frame.
5276 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5277 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5278 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5279 buffer that shows the original message.
5281 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5282 with separator lines around the contents.
5284 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5285 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5286 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5287 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5289 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5291 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5292 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5293 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5294 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5296 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5297 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5300 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5301 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5304 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5305 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5306 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5307 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5309 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5310 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5311 be taken to be magic.
5313 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5314 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5315 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5317 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5318 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5320 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5321 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5323 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5325 new key dired.el binding old key
5326 ------- ---------------- -------
5327 * c dired-change-marks c
5329 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5330 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5331 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5333 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5334 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5335 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5336 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5337 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5338 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5342 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5343 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5344 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5345 each time you run it.
5347 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5348 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5350 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5351 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5352 means to move in the opposite direction.
5354 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5355 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5357 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5358 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5359 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5360 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5365 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5367 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5370 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
5371 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5373 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5376 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5378 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5380 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5382 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5383 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5384 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5386 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
5388 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
5390 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
5391 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
5393 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
5394 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
5395 used to pick articles.
5397 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
5398 another have been added.
5400 `M-x gnus-change-server'
5402 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
5403 generating lines in buffers.
5405 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
5408 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
5410 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
5412 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
5414 *** Scores can be decayed.
5416 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
5418 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
5419 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
5421 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
5424 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
5426 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
5427 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
5429 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
5431 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
5432 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
5434 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
5435 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
5437 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
5440 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
5441 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
5443 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
5445 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
5447 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
5449 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
5451 Use the `Y c' command.
5453 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
5455 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
5457 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
5459 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
5460 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
5462 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
5464 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
5466 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
5467 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
5469 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
5471 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
5472 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
5473 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
5474 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
5477 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
5478 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
5479 particular news group. This can be done by:
5481 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
5483 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
5484 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
5485 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
5486 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
5487 for reading and posting).
5489 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
5490 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
5491 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
5492 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
5495 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
5496 default. Here are some of these default settings:
5498 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
5499 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
5500 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
5501 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
5502 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
5504 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
5505 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
5509 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
5510 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
5511 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
5512 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
5513 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
5516 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
5517 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
5518 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
5519 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
5520 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
5521 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
5523 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
5524 of the current buffer.
5526 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
5527 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
5528 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
5530 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
5531 style that the Python developers like.
5533 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
5534 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
5535 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
5539 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
5540 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
5541 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
5543 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
5544 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
5547 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
5548 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
5550 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
5551 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
5552 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
5553 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
5555 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
5556 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
5558 ** Calendar changes.
5560 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
5561 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
5562 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
5566 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
5568 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
5570 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
5571 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
5572 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
5573 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
5574 It defaults to `letter'.
5575 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
5577 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
5578 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
5579 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
5581 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
5582 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
5585 *** Horizontal layout
5587 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
5588 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
5589 All are measured in points.
5593 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
5594 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
5595 All are measured in points.
5599 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
5600 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
5601 margin above the text.
5603 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
5604 framing box is printed around the header.
5606 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
5607 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
5609 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
5610 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
5611 `ps-header-font-size'.
5615 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
5616 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
5617 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
5618 elements to this alist.
5620 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
5621 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
5623 ** hideshow changes.
5625 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
5628 *** Support for java-mode added.
5630 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
5631 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
5633 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
5634 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
5635 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
5637 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
5638 robust and a lot faster.
5640 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
5642 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
5643 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
5644 documentation for more details.
5646 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
5648 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
5649 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
5650 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
5651 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
5652 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
5654 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
5655 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
5656 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
5657 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
5663 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
5664 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
5665 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
5666 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
5667 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
5668 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
5670 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
5672 *** Maximum decoration
5674 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
5675 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
5676 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
5677 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
5678 to get the old behavior.
5682 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
5684 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
5685 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
5687 *** Configurable support
5689 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
5690 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
5691 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
5692 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
5693 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
5694 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
5695 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
5697 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
5698 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
5699 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
5701 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
5703 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
5704 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
5707 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
5709 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
5715 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
5716 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
5717 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
5718 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
5720 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
5722 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
5723 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
5724 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
5726 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
5728 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
5729 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
5730 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
5731 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
5732 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
5733 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
5734 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
5736 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
5737 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
5738 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
5739 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
5740 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
5741 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
5743 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
5745 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
5746 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
5747 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
5748 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
5750 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
5753 ** Ada mode changes.
5755 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
5756 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
5757 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
5758 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
5761 *** There are two new commands:
5762 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
5763 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
5765 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
5766 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
5767 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
5769 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
5770 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
5771 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
5773 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
5774 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
5775 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
5776 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
5778 ** Scheme mode changes.
5780 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
5781 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
5782 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
5783 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
5786 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
5787 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
5788 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
5789 variables as buffer-local variables.
5791 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
5794 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
5796 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
5797 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
5798 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
5799 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
5801 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
5802 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
5805 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
5806 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
5807 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
5808 option takes precedence.
5810 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
5811 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
5812 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
5814 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
5815 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
5818 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
5819 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
5821 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
5822 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
5825 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
5826 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
5827 these register values no longer become completely useless.
5828 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
5829 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
5830 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
5832 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
5833 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
5834 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
5835 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
5837 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
5838 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
5839 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
5840 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
5841 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
5843 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
5844 since it applies only to the current frame.
5846 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
5847 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
5848 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
5850 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
5851 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
5852 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
5853 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
5854 instead of just the file you are editing.
5858 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
5859 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
5860 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
5861 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
5862 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
5865 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
5866 knows which kind of label is needed.
5868 C-c ) reftex-reference
5869 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
5870 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
5872 C-c [ reftex-citation
5873 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
5874 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
5876 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
5877 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
5880 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
5881 can quickly jump to every section.
5883 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
5884 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
5885 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
5886 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
5887 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
5889 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5891 *** Info documentation is now available.
5893 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
5894 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
5896 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
5897 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
5899 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
5900 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
5902 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
5903 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
5904 appropriate functions.
5906 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
5907 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
5909 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
5912 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
5913 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
5915 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
5918 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
5919 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
5920 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
5922 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
5923 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
5924 prefixed with `ALT'.
5926 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
5927 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
5928 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
5931 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
5932 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
5933 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
5935 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
5936 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
5938 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
5939 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
5940 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
5942 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
5944 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
5946 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
5949 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5950 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5953 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5956 *** Added support for imenu.
5958 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5959 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5960 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5961 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5963 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5964 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5966 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5968 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
5970 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5971 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5972 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5975 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5976 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5978 ** browse-url changes
5980 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5981 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5982 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5983 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5984 customization variables.
5986 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5988 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5989 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5990 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5994 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5995 pops up the Info file for this command.
5997 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5998 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5999 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6002 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6003 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6004 files in the same directory.
6006 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6007 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6008 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6012 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6013 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6015 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6016 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6017 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6018 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6019 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6020 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6021 color when Viper is in insert state.
6022 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6023 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6024 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6028 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6029 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6030 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6031 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6032 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6034 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6036 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6037 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6039 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6040 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6041 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6043 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6044 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6045 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6046 methods and protocols.
6048 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6049 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6050 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6053 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6054 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6055 at least M times and as many as N times.
6057 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6058 in files has changed slightly.
6060 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6061 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6062 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6063 with old time-stamp-format values.
6065 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6066 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6067 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6070 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6071 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6072 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6073 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6074 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6075 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6077 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6078 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6079 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6081 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6082 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6083 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6084 recommended now will continue to work then.
6086 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6089 ** There are some additional major modes:
6091 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6092 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6093 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6095 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6096 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6099 ** New Lisp packages include:
6101 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6103 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6104 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6106 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6108 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6111 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6112 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6115 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6116 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6117 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6118 strings or comments.
6120 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6121 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6122 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6123 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6126 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6127 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6129 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6130 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6132 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6134 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6135 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6137 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6139 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6141 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6143 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6144 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6146 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6147 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6148 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6149 original place after inserting the copy.
6151 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6154 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6155 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6156 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6158 Enable mouse-drag with:
6159 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6161 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6163 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6164 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6166 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6167 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6171 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6172 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6173 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6174 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6175 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6176 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6177 instance) and vice versa.
6179 To use this package load it using
6180 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6181 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6182 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6183 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6184 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6185 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6187 *** Interface to ph.
6189 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6191 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6192 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6195 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6197 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6198 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6199 while the real cursor does not move.
6201 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6202 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6204 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6205 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6209 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6210 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6211 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6212 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6214 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6216 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6218 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6220 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6221 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6222 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6223 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6224 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6226 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6227 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6228 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6229 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6230 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6231 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6233 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6235 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6236 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6237 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6238 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6240 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6241 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6243 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6244 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6247 ** Basic Lisp changes
6249 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6250 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6252 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6253 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6256 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6258 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6260 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6261 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6263 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6264 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6267 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6269 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6271 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6273 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6274 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6275 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6278 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6279 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6280 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6282 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6283 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6284 adding one of these suffixes.
6286 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6287 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6288 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6290 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6291 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6293 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6295 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6296 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6298 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6299 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6301 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6303 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6304 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6306 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6307 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6308 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6309 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6311 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6312 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6315 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6316 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6317 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6320 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6321 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6324 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6326 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6327 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6328 Then it returns that string.
6330 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6332 (with-output-to-string
6333 (princ "The buffer is ")
6334 (princ (buffer-name)))
6336 returns "The buffer is foo".
6338 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6341 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6342 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6343 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6345 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6346 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6348 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6349 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6350 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6351 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6352 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6353 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6355 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6356 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6357 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6360 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6361 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6362 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6363 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6364 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6366 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6367 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6368 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6369 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6371 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6372 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6374 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
6376 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6377 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6378 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6379 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6382 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6383 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6386 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
6388 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
6389 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
6390 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
6391 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
6392 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
6394 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
6396 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
6397 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
6398 more than the number of characters.
6400 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
6401 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
6402 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
6403 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
6404 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
6405 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
6407 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
6408 and returns a string containing those characters.
6410 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
6411 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
6412 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
6413 character, sref signals an error.
6415 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
6416 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
6417 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6419 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
6420 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
6421 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6423 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
6424 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
6425 to a vector of the characters in it.
6427 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
6428 of a string. You call it as follows:
6430 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
6432 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
6433 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
6434 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
6435 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
6436 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
6438 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
6439 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6441 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
6442 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6444 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
6445 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
6446 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
6447 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
6449 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
6451 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
6453 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
6454 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
6455 are not included in the resulting value.
6457 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
6458 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
6459 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
6460 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
6462 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
6463 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
6464 character extends across that column), then the padding character
6465 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
6466 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
6467 column START-COLUMN.
6469 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
6470 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
6471 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
6472 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
6473 changed text, before the change.
6475 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
6476 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
6477 one character set for each script, not for each language.
6479 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
6481 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
6483 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
6484 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
6486 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
6487 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
6488 which identify the character within that character set.
6490 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
6491 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
6492 opposite of split-char.
6494 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
6495 of all the characters between BEG and END.
6497 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
6498 of all the characters in a string.
6500 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
6501 and specifying coding systems.
6503 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
6504 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
6505 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
6506 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
6507 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
6508 as what to do about code conversion.)
6510 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
6511 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
6513 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6514 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6515 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
6517 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6518 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
6519 to match against a file name.
6521 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6522 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6523 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6524 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6525 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6526 specifies the coding system for encoding.
6528 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6529 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6531 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
6532 the coding system to use for network sockets.
6534 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6535 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
6536 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
6539 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6540 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6541 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6542 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6543 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6544 specifies the coding system for encoding.
6546 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6547 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6549 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6550 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6551 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
6552 start the subprocess.
6554 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
6555 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
6556 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
6557 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
6558 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
6560 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
6561 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
6564 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
6565 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
6566 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
6567 connection permanently or until overridden.
6569 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
6570 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
6571 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
6572 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
6573 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
6574 system for one operation at a time.
6576 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
6577 files, subprocesses or network connections.
6579 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
6580 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
6581 The value is a cons cell,
6582 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
6583 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
6584 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
6585 input to the subprocess.
6587 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
6588 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
6590 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
6591 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
6592 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
6594 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
6595 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
6596 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
6597 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
6600 Thus, instead of writing
6602 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
6603 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
6605 you would now write this:
6607 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
6608 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
6612 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
6613 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
6614 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
6615 for a description of them.
6617 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
6618 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
6620 (defgroup ispell nil
6621 "Spell checking using Ispell."
6624 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
6625 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
6626 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
6627 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
6628 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
6630 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
6631 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
6632 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
6633 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
6634 first-level subgroups.
6636 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
6638 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
6639 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
6643 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
6644 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
6645 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
6646 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
6647 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
6648 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
6650 ** Text property changes
6652 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
6655 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
6656 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
6657 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
6658 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
6659 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
6661 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
6662 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
6663 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
6664 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
6666 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
6667 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
6668 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
6670 ** Changes in invisibility features
6672 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
6673 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
6674 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
6675 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
6676 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
6677 make the overlay visible.
6679 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
6680 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
6681 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
6682 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
6683 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
6684 t when it should hide it.
6686 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
6688 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
6689 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
6690 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
6691 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
6692 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
6693 Here is an example of how to do this:
6695 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
6696 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
6697 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
6698 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
6701 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
6704 ;; When done with the overlays:
6705 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
6707 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
6709 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
6711 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
6712 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
6713 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
6714 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
6716 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
6717 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
6718 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
6720 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
6721 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
6723 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
6724 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
6726 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
6727 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
6728 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
6730 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
6731 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
6732 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
6733 determine the syntax type of the character.
6735 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
6736 of the current buffer.
6738 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
6739 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
6740 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
6742 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
6743 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
6744 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
6745 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
6746 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
6748 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
6751 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
6752 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
6753 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
6755 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
6756 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
6757 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
6758 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
6759 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
6761 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
6762 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
6763 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
6765 ** Changes in face features
6767 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
6768 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
6770 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
6771 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
6773 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
6774 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
6776 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
6777 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
6779 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
6780 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
6781 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
6782 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
6785 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
6786 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
6788 ** Changes in file-handling functions
6790 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
6791 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
6792 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
6793 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
6795 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
6798 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
6799 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
6801 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
6802 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
6804 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
6805 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
6807 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
6808 character code conversion as well as other things.
6810 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
6811 (formerly it did not).
6813 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
6814 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
6816 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
6817 instead of constant strings.
6819 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
6820 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
6821 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
6823 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
6824 in the same way as before.
6826 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
6827 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
6828 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
6830 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
6831 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
6832 else, and returns nil.
6834 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
6835 directory cannot be listed.
6837 ** Changes in minibuffer input
6839 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
6840 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
6841 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
6842 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
6845 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
6846 It is available through the history command M-n.
6848 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
6849 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
6850 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
6851 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
6852 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
6854 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
6855 argument in this way.
6857 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
6858 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
6859 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
6861 ** Echo area features
6863 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
6864 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
6865 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
6866 after the echo area is cleared.
6868 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
6869 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
6871 ** Keyboard input features
6873 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
6874 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
6876 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
6877 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
6880 ** Frame-related changes
6882 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
6883 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
6884 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
6886 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
6887 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
6888 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
6890 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6891 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
6892 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
6893 in the selected frame.
6895 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
6896 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
6897 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
6899 ** X Windows features
6901 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
6902 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
6903 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
6905 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
6906 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
6908 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
6909 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
6910 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
6912 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
6913 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
6915 ** Subprocess features
6917 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
6918 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
6921 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
6922 and returns the output from the command as a string.
6924 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
6925 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
6927 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
6928 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
6930 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
6931 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
6932 goes after the other menu items.
6934 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
6935 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
6936 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
6939 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
6940 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
6942 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
6943 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
6946 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
6947 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
6948 but its hook is still run.
6950 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6951 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6953 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6954 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6955 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6957 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6958 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6959 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6962 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6963 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6965 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6966 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6967 functions like display-time.
6969 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6970 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6972 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6973 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6974 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6976 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6977 if there is an error in compilation.
6979 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6980 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6981 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6982 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6984 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6985 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6986 the *scratch* buffer.
6988 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6989 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6990 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6991 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6993 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6994 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6995 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6997 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6998 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6999 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7000 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7002 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7003 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7004 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7006 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7007 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7008 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7009 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7010 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7013 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7014 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7015 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7016 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7018 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7019 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7020 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7021 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7023 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7025 ** imenu.el changes.
7027 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7028 item from menu created by imenu.
7030 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7031 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7032 select one of those items.
7034 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7036 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7038 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7039 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7041 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7042 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7043 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7045 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7047 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7048 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7050 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7051 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7052 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7053 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7054 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7057 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7058 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7060 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7061 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7062 as in previous Emacs versions.
7064 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7065 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7066 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7069 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7070 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7071 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7072 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7075 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7076 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7077 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7078 line and then executing the macro.
7080 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7082 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7083 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7084 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7089 *** Font Lock support modes
7091 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7092 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7093 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7094 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7095 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7097 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7099 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7105 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7106 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7107 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7108 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7109 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7110 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7111 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7113 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7115 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7117 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7119 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7121 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7124 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7129 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7130 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7131 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7132 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7134 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7135 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7137 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7138 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7141 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7142 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7144 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7146 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7148 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7150 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7153 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7155 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7157 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7159 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7161 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7164 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7166 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7168 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7170 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7172 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7174 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7176 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7178 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7181 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7183 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7186 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7188 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7189 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7191 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7193 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7195 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7197 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7199 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7202 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7204 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7205 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7207 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7208 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7209 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7211 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7212 articles with the `*' command.
7214 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7216 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7218 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7220 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7222 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7223 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7225 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7228 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7230 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7232 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7234 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7236 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7238 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7240 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7242 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7244 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7246 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7247 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7249 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7252 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7254 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7255 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7257 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7259 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7261 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7263 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7266 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7268 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7270 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7271 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7273 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7275 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7277 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7279 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7281 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7283 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7286 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7288 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7289 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7290 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7293 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7296 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7299 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7300 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7303 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7304 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7305 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7306 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7307 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7310 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7312 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7314 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7315 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7316 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7317 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7318 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7320 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7321 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7322 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7324 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7326 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7327 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7328 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7329 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7330 chapter of the manual for details.
7332 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7333 customization variables take effect.
7335 ** Marking with the mouse.
7337 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7338 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7339 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7341 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7343 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7345 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7346 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7348 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7349 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7350 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7351 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7352 applications, these problems are significant.
7354 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7355 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7356 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7357 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7358 other DOS application as a subprocess.
7360 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7361 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7363 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7364 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7365 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7366 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7367 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7368 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7370 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7372 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7373 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7374 minibuffer contains.
7376 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7378 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7379 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7380 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7381 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7383 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7384 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7385 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
7386 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
7388 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
7389 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
7391 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
7392 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
7393 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
7395 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
7396 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
7397 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
7398 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
7400 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
7402 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
7403 to replace the characters it "deletes".
7405 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
7407 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
7408 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
7409 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
7410 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
7411 immediately after the selected one.
7413 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
7414 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
7416 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
7418 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
7419 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
7420 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
7421 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
7424 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
7425 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
7428 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
7429 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
7430 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
7431 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
7432 now that the bug is fixed.
7434 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
7436 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
7437 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
7438 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
7439 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
7441 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
7442 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
7443 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
7444 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
7446 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
7447 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
7448 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
7450 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
7451 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
7452 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
7453 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
7456 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
7457 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
7459 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
7460 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
7461 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
7462 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
7464 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
7465 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
7466 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
7467 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
7468 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
7469 `mail-directory-stream'.)
7471 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
7472 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
7473 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
7474 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
7476 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
7477 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
7478 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
7480 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
7481 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
7482 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
7483 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
7484 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
7485 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
7486 to a limitation in font-lock).
7488 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
7490 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
7491 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
7492 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
7495 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
7496 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
7498 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7500 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
7502 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
7504 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
7506 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
7507 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
7508 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
7509 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
7510 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
7511 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
7513 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
7516 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
7517 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
7519 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
7524 *** Global Font Lock mode
7526 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
7527 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
7528 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
7529 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
7530 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
7532 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
7534 (global-font-lock-mode t)
7538 *** Local Refontification
7540 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
7541 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
7542 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
7543 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
7545 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
7546 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
7547 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
7548 above and below point.
7550 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
7554 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
7555 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
7556 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
7557 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
7558 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
7561 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
7563 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
7564 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
7566 ** hide-show changes.
7568 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
7569 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
7572 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
7573 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
7575 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
7576 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
7577 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
7581 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
7582 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
7584 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
7585 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
7587 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
7589 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
7590 pressing both mouse buttons.
7592 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
7593 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
7596 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
7599 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
7601 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
7602 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
7604 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
7606 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
7608 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
7610 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
7612 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
7614 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
7616 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
7617 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
7618 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
7619 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
7620 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
7622 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
7624 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
7625 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
7626 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
7629 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
7632 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
7634 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
7635 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
7637 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
7638 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
7640 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
7641 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
7642 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
7644 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
7645 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
7648 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7650 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
7651 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
7652 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
7654 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
7655 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
7656 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
7658 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
7659 up if too much time passes.
7661 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
7663 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
7664 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
7665 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
7668 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
7669 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
7670 call looks like this:
7672 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7674 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
7675 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
7676 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
7679 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
7680 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
7683 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
7684 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
7685 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
7686 each time Emacs becomes idle.
7688 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
7689 idle for SECS seconds.
7691 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
7692 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
7693 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
7696 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
7697 there is no answer within a certain time.
7699 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
7701 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
7702 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
7703 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
7705 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
7706 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
7707 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
7708 arguments in between are ignored.
7710 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
7711 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
7713 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
7714 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
7715 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
7716 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
7719 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
7720 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
7721 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
7722 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
7723 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
7724 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
7726 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
7727 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
7728 systems with limited file name syntax.
7730 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
7731 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
7732 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
7735 (defvar save-completions-file-name
7736 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
7737 "*The filename to save completions to.")
7739 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
7740 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
7741 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
7742 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
7743 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
7745 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
7746 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
7747 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
7749 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
7750 marker from its buffer position.
7752 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
7753 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
7754 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
7756 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
7757 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
7758 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
7759 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
7760 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
7761 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
7763 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
7764 errors that happen often during editing.
7766 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
7767 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
7768 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
7770 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
7771 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
7773 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
7774 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
7775 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
7776 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
7777 and not get-buffer-window.
7779 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
7780 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
7781 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
7783 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
7784 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
7785 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
7786 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
7787 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
7788 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
7789 over and over for the same text.
7791 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
7793 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
7794 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
7796 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
7799 in addition to the normal
7803 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
7804 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
7805 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
7807 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7809 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
7810 Copyright information:
7812 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7814 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7815 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7816 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7817 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7819 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7820 of this document, or of portions of it,
7821 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7822 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7826 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"