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1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
4
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8 \f
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
13 \f
14 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
15
16 ** Faces and frame parameters.
17
18 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
19 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
20 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
21 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
22 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
23 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
24 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
25
26 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
27 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
28 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
29 `default' face and vice versa.
30
31 ** New face `menu'.
32
33 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
34 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
35 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
36
37 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
38
39 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
40 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
41 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
42 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
43
44 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
45 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
46 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
47
48 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
49 `ScreenGamma'.
50
51 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
52
53 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
54 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
55 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
56 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
57 the text.
58
59 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
60
61 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
62 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
63 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
64 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
65 specify a font.
66
67 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
68 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
69 under Lisp changes, below.
70
71 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
72
73 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
74 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
75 it is hollow.
76
77 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
78 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
79 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
80 customizing face `fringe'.
81
82 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
83 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
84
85 ** LessTif support.
86
87 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
88 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
89
90 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
91
92 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
93 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
94 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
95 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
96 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
97 Emacs.
98
99 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
100 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
101 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
102 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
103 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
104 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
105
106 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
107 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
108 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
109 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
110 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
111 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
112
113 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
114 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
115 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
116 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
117 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
118
119 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
120
121 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
122 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
123 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
124
125 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
126
127 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
128 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
129 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
130 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
131 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
132 whitespace.
133
134 ** Busy-cursor.
135
136 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
137 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
138
139 ** Blinking cursor
140
141 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
142 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
143 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
144 the group `cursor'.
145
146 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
147
148 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
149 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
150 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
151 details.
152
153 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
154 have to do anything to activate it.
155
156 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
157
158 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
159 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
160 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
161 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
162
163 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
164
165 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
166
167 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
168
169 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
170 one.
171
172 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
173 Motif.
174
175 ** Hscrolling in C code.
176
177 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
178
179 ** Tool bar support.
180
181 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
182 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
183
184 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
185
186 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
187 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
188 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
189 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
190 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
191
192 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
193
194 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
195 buffers.
196
197 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
198 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
199
200 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
201
202 - Mouse-1 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
203 toggles the read-only status.
204
205 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
206
207 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
208
209 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
210 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialogs' is
211 non-nil.
212
213 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
214
215 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
216 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
217 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
218 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
219 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
220 attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
221
222 ** Sound support
223
224 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
225 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
226 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
227 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
228 to enable sound support.
229
230 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
231 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
232 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
233 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
234 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
235 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
236
237 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
238
239 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
240
241 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
242 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
243 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
244
245 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
246 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
247
248 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
249 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
250 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
251
252 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
253
254 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
255 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
256 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
257 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
258
259 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
260 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
261 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
262 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
263
264 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
265 notably at the end of lines.
266
267 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
268 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
269
270 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
271 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
272 after each match to get the replacement text.
273
274 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
275
276 If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
277 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
278 on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
279 by setting the following variable:
280
281 - User option: max-mini-window-height
282
283 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
284 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
285 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
286
287 Default is 0.25.
288
289 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
290
291 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
292 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
293 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
294 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
295 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
296 can be edited from that buffer.
297
298 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
299 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
300 `A' to use all marked entries).
301
302 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
303 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
304
305 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
306 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
307 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
308 been cited.
309
310 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
311 has the following new features:
312
313 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
314 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
315 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
316 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
317
318 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
319 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
320 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
321 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
322 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
323 defaults to 1.
324
325 ** Tooltips.
326
327 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
328 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
329 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
330
331 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
332 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
333 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
334 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
335
336 ** Customize changes
337
338 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
339 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
340 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
341
342 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
343 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
344 default).
345
346 ** New features in evaluation commands
347
348 The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
349 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
350 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
351 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
352 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
353
354 ** Dired changes
355
356 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
357 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
358 is, delete only empty directories.
359
360 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
361 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
362 copy directories recursively.
363
364 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
365 use the -f option when sending mail.
366
367 ** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
368 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
369
370 ** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
371 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
372 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
373
374 ** Shell script mode changes.
375
376 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
377 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
378 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
379
380 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
381 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
382 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
383
384 ** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
385 These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
386 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
387 currently no specific input method support for them.
388
389 ** New modes and packages
390
391 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
392
393 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
394
395 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
396
397 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
398 Pascal) language.
399
400 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
401 the text at point.
402
403 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
404
405 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
406
407 *** whitespace.el ???
408
409 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
410 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
411 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
412 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
413 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
414 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
415 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
416
417 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
418
419 Here is an example of columns:
420
421 horse apple bus
422 dog pineapple car EXTRA
423 porcupine strawberry airplane
424
425 Doing the following settings:
426
427 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
428 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
429 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
430 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
431
432
433 Selecting the lines above and typing:
434
435 M-x delimit-columns-region
436
437 It results:
438
439 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
440 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
441 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
442
443 delim-col has the following options:
444
445 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
446 before all columns.
447
448 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
449 between each column.
450
451 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
452 after all columns.
453
454 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
455 each column.
456
457 delim-col has the following commands:
458
459 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
460 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
461
462 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
463 were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
464 is displayed in the "Files" menu.
465
466 The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
467
468 To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
469
470 To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
471 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
472
473 To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
474 M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
475
476 ** Withdrawn packages
477
478 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
479 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
480
481 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el.
482 \f
483 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
484
485 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
486 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
487 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
488 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
489
490 ** New functions and variables for locales.
491
492 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
493 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
494 time functions like strftime. The new variables `messages-locale' and
495 `time-locale' give the system locales to be used during the next
496 invocations of these two types of functions; the new variables
497 `previous-messages-locale' and `previous-time-locale' give the locales
498 most recently used.
499
500 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
501 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
502 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
503 environment variables. It is normally invoked during startup. It
504 uses the new variables `locale-language-names',
505 `locale-charset-language-names', and `locale-preferred-coding-systems'
506 to make its decisions.
507
508 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
509 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
510 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
511 start sequences.
512
513 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
514 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
515
516 ** New function `propertize'
517
518 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
519 strings with text properties.
520
521 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
522
523 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
524 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
525 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
526 specified value of that property. Example:
527
528 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
529
530 +++
531 ** push and pop macros.
532
533 A simple version of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
534 is now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
535 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
536
537 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
538 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
539 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
540
541 +++
542 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
543 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
544
545 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
546 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
547 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
548 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
549 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
550 space, and DEL.
551 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
552 and DEL.
553 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
554 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
555 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
556 [:alpha:] matches letters.
557 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
558 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
559 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
560 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
561 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
562 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
563 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
564 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
565 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
566 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
567 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
568
569 +++
570 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
571
572 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
573
574 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
575
576 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
577 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
578
579 :test TEST
580
581 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
582 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
583 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
584
585 :size SIZE
586
587 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
588 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
589
590 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
591
592 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
593 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
594 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
595 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
596 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
597
598 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
599
600 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
601 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
602 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
603
604 :weakness WEAK
605
606 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
607 Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
608 their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
609 hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
610
611 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
612
613 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
614
615 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
616
617 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
618
619 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
620
621 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
622 values are shared.
623
624 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
625
626 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
627
628 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
629
630 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
631
632 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
633
634 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
635
636 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
637
638 Returns the size of TABLE.
639
640 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
641
642 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
643
644 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
645
646 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
647
648 - Function: clrhash TABLE
649
650 Clear TABLE.
651
652 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
653
654 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
655 not found.
656
657 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
658
659 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
660 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
661
662 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
663
664 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
665
666 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
667
668 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
669 arguments KEY and VALUE.
670
671 - Function: sxhash OBJ
672
673 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
674
675 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
676
677 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
678 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
679 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
680 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
681 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
682
683 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
684
685 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
686 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
687 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
688
689 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
690 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
691
692 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
693 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
694
695 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
696 (sxhash (upcase a)))
697
698 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
699 'case-fold-string-hash))
700
701 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
702
703 +++
704 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
705
706 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
707 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
708 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
709
710 +++
711 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
712
713 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
714 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
715
716 You can also do several calls to print functions using a common
717 set of #N= constructs; here is how.
718
719 (let ((print-circle t)
720 (print-continuous-numbering t)
721 print-number-table)
722 (print1 ...)
723 (print1 ...)
724 ...)
725
726 +++
727 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
728 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
729 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
730 is too short to reach that column.
731
732 +++
733 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
734 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
735 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
736 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
737
738 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
739 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
740 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
741
742 +++
743 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
744 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
745
746 +++
747 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
748 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
749
750 +++
751 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
752 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
753 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
754 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
755 temporary-file-directory instead.
756
757 +++
758 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
759 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
760 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
761 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
762
763 +++
764 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
765 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
766
767 +++
768 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
769
770 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
771 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
772 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
773
774 +++
775 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
776
777 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
778 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
779 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
780 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
781 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
782 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
783
784 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
785 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
786 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
787 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
788
789 +++
790 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
791
792 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
793 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
794 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
795 result string.
796
797 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
798 string where arguments appear in the result string.
799
800 Example:
801
802 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
803 (s2 "world"))
804 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
805 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
806 (format s1 s2))
807
808 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
809
810 +++
811 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
812
813 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
814 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
815 argument in it.
816
817 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
818 (arg "world"))
819 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
820 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
821 (message msg arg))
822
823 +++
824 ** Sound support
825
826 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
827 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
828
829 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
830 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
831 to enable sound support.
832
833 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
834 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
835 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
836 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
837 sound to play, before playing the sound.
838
839 The following sound properties are supported:
840
841 - `:file FILE'
842
843 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
844 searched relative to `data-directory'.
845
846 - `:volume VOLUME'
847
848 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
849 0..1. This property is optional.
850
851 Other properties are ignored.
852
853 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
854 \f
855 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
856
857 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
858 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
859 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
860 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
861
862 ** New face implementation.
863
864 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
865 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
866
867 +++
868 *** New faces.
869
870 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
871
872 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
873
874 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
875 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
876
877 3. Font height in 1/10pt
878
879 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
880
881 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
882
883 6. Foreground color.
884
885 7. Background color.
886
887 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
888
889 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
890
891 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
892
893 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
894
895 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
896 color.
897
898 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
899 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
900
901 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
902 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
903 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
904 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
905 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
906 attributes mentioned above.
907
908 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
909 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
910 created frames.
911
912 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
913 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
914 `fully-specified'.
915
916 +++
917 *** Face merging.
918
919 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
920 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
921 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
922 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
923 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
924 results in a fully-specified face.
925
926 +++
927 *** Face realization.
928
929 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
930 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
931 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
932 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
933 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
934 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
935
936 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
937 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
938 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
939 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
940
941 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
942 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
943 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
944 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
945 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
946
947 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
948 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
949 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
950 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
951 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
952 Emacs.
953
954 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
955 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
956 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
957 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
958
959 ++++
960 **** Clearing face caches.
961
962 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
963 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
964 unused fonts.
965
966 +++
967 *** Font selection.
968
969 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
970 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
971 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
972
973 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
974 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
975 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
976 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
977 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
978
979 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
980 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
981 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
982
983 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
984
985 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
986 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
987 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
988 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
989 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
990 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
991 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
992
993 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
994 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
995 face doesn't exist.
996
997 +++
998 **** Scalable fonts
999
1000 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1001 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1002 servers.
1003
1004 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
1005 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
1006 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1007 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1008 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1009 that list. Example:
1010
1011 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1012
1013 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1014
1015 +++
1016 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1017
1018 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1019
1020 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1021 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1022 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1023
1024 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1025 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1026 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1027 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1028 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1029 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1030 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1031 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1032 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1033 of the face font sort order.
1034
1035 - Function: x-font-family-list
1036
1037 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1038 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1039 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1040 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1041
1042 - Variable: font-list-limit
1043
1044 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1045 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1046 matching font. The default is currently 100.
1047
1048 +++
1049 *** Setting face attributes.
1050
1051 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1052 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1053 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1054 `face-attribute'.
1055
1056 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1057 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1058
1059 The following attributes are recognized:
1060
1061 `:family'
1062
1063 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1064 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1065 and `?' are allowed.
1066
1067 `:width'
1068
1069 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1070 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1071 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1072 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1073
1074 `:height'
1075
1076 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
1077 1/10 pt.
1078
1079 `:weight'
1080
1081 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1082 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1083 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1084
1085 `:slant'
1086
1087 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1088 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1089 `reverse-oblique'.
1090
1091 `:foreground', `:background'
1092
1093 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1094
1095 `:underline'
1096
1097 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1098 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1099 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1100 don't underline.
1101
1102 `:overline'
1103
1104 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1105 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1106 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1107 overline.
1108
1109 `:strike-through'
1110
1111 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1112 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1113 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1114 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1115
1116 `:box'
1117
1118 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1119 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1120 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1121 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1122 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1123 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1124 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1125 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1126 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1127 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1128 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1129 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1130 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1131 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1132 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1133 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1134 box.
1135
1136 `:inverse-video'
1137
1138 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1139 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1140
1141 `:stipple'
1142
1143 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1144 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1145 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1146 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1147 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1148 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1149
1150 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1151 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1152
1153 `:font'
1154
1155 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1156 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1157 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1158 versions of Emacs.
1159
1160 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1161 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1162 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1163
1164 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1165 `defface'.
1166
1167 *** Face attributes and X resources
1168
1169 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1170 from X resources:
1171
1172 Face attribute X resource class
1173 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
1174 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1175 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1176 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1177 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1178 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1179 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1180 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1181 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1182 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1183 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1184 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1185 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1186 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
1187 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
1188 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1189 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1190 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1191 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1192 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1193
1194 +++
1195 *** Text property `face'.
1196
1197 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1198 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1199 specification can be
1200
1201 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1202
1203 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1204 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1205 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1206 for face attribute names.
1207
1208 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1209 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1210 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1211
1212 +++
1213 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1214
1215 The function `face-register-tty-color' can be used to define colors
1216 for use on TTY frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the
1217 terminal. Emacs defines a couple of default color mappings by
1218 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
1219 `tty-defined-colors'. The function `face-clear-tty-colors' can be
1220 used to clear the mapping table.
1221
1222 +++
1223 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
1224
1225 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
1226
1227 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1228 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1229 Otherwise, it returns zero.
1230
1231 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
1232
1233 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
1234 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
1235 text-property.
1236
1237 Certain functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
1238 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
1239 to the boundary between fields (beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
1240 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
1241 commands continue into the next field if repeated).
1242
1243 The new function constrain-to-field may be used to achieve similar
1244 behavior; other new field functions include field-beginning, field-end,
1245 erase-field, and field-string.
1246
1247 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
1248 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that many
1249 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
1250
1251 +++
1252 ** Image support.
1253
1254 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
1255 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
1256 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
1257 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
1258
1259 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
1260 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
1261 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
1262 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
1263 area.
1264
1265 IMAGE is an image specification.
1266
1267 *** Image specifications
1268
1269 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
1270 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
1271 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
1272 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'.
1273
1274 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
1275
1276 `:ascent ASCENT'
1277
1278 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
1279 of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
1280
1281 `:margin MARGIN'
1282
1283 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
1284 margin around the image. Default is 0.
1285
1286 `:relief RELIEF'
1287
1288 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
1289 around an image.
1290
1291 `:algorithm ALGO'
1292
1293 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
1294 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
1295 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
1296 which is intended to display images "disabled."
1297
1298 `:heuristic-mask BG'
1299
1300 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
1301 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
1302 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
1303 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
1304 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
1305 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
1306 background of the image.
1307
1308 `:file FILE'
1309
1310 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
1311 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
1312 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
1313 may be present in the image specification.
1314
1315
1316 *** Supported image types
1317
1318 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
1319
1320 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
1321 properties supported are
1322
1323 `:foreground FG'
1324
1325 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
1326 is the frame's foreground.
1327
1328 `:background FG'
1329
1330 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
1331 the frame's background color.
1332
1333 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
1334 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
1335 instead of a `:file' property.
1336
1337 `:width WIDTH'
1338
1339 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
1340
1341 `:height HEIGHT'
1342
1343 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
1344
1345 `:data DATA'
1346
1347 DATA must be either
1348
1349 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
1350 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
1351
1352 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
1353
1354 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
1355 bitmap.
1356
1357 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
1358
1359 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
1360 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
1361 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
1362 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
1363
1364 Additional image properties supported are:
1365
1366 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
1367
1368 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
1369 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
1370 name.
1371
1372 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
1373 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
1374
1375 `:data DATA'
1376
1377 DATA must be a string containing an XPM image. The contents of the
1378 string are of the same format as that of XPM files.
1379
1380 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
1381 to display compressed images.
1382
1383 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
1384
1385 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
1386 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
1387 defined.
1388
1389 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
1390
1391 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
1392 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1393 properties defined.
1394
1395 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
1396
1397 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
1398 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1399 properties defined.
1400
1401 **** GIF, image type `gif'
1402
1403 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
1404 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
1405
1406 Additional image properties supported are:
1407
1408 `:index INDEX'
1409
1410 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
1411 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
1412
1413 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
1414 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
1415 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
1416 every 0.1 seconds.
1417
1418 (defun show-anim (file max)
1419 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
1420 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
1421
1422 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
1423 (when (= idx max)
1424 (setq idx 0))
1425 (let ((img (create-image file nil :index idx)))
1426 (save-excursion
1427 (set-buffer buffer)
1428 (goto-char (point-min))
1429 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
1430 (insert-image img "x"))
1431 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
1432
1433 **** PNG, image type `png'
1434
1435 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
1436 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1437 properties defined.
1438
1439 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
1440
1441 Additional image properties supported are:
1442
1443 `:pt-width WIDTH'
1444
1445 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
1446 integer. This is a required property.
1447
1448 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
1449
1450 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
1451 must be a integer. This is an required property.
1452
1453 `:bounding-box BOX'
1454
1455 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
1456 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
1457 files. This is an required property.
1458
1459 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
1460 lisp/gs.el.
1461
1462 *** Lisp interface.
1463
1464 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
1465 which are supported in the current configuration.
1466
1467 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
1468 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
1469 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
1470 manually.
1471
1472 *** Simplified image API, image.el
1473
1474 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
1475 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
1476 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
1477 define an image based on available image types. The functions
1478 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
1479 buffer.
1480
1481 +++
1482 ** Display margins.
1483
1484 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
1485 and images.
1486
1487 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
1488 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
1489 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
1490 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
1491 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
1492 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
1493 of the display margins.
1494
1495 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
1496 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
1497 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
1498 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
1499 in this file).
1500
1501 +++
1502 ** Help display
1503
1504 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
1505 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
1506 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
1507 that have a `help-echo' property.
1508
1509 The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
1510 items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
1511 If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
1512 evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
1513 tool-bar item is used.
1514
1515 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
1516 help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
1517 help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
1518
1519 +++
1520 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
1521
1522 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
1523 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
1524
1525 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
1526 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
1527 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
1528 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
1529 used.
1530
1531 (global-set-key [A-down]
1532 #'(lambda ()
1533 (interactive)
1534 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1535 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
1536 (global-set-key [A-up]
1537 #'(lambda ()
1538 (interactive)
1539 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1540 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
1541
1542 +++
1543 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
1544
1545 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
1546 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
1547 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
1548 is called with one argument, POS.
1549
1550 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
1551 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
1552 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
1553 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
1554 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
1555
1556 +++
1557 ** Tool bar support.
1558
1559 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
1560 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
1561 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
1562 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
1563 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
1564 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
1565
1566 *** Tool bar item definitions
1567
1568 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
1569 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
1570 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
1571
1572 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
1573 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
1574 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
1575 property (see below).
1576
1577 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
1578 binding are currently ignored.
1579
1580 The following properties are recognized:
1581
1582 `:enable FORM'.
1583
1584 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
1585 or disabled.
1586
1587 `:visible FORM'
1588
1589 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
1590
1591 `:filter FUNCTION'
1592
1593 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
1594 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
1595 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
1596
1597 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
1598
1599 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
1600 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
1601
1602 `:image IMAGES'
1603
1604 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
1605 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
1606 meaning of each of the four elements:
1607
1608 Index Use when item is
1609 ----------------------------------------
1610 0 enabled and selected
1611 1 enabled and deselected
1612 2 disabled and selected
1613 3 disabled and deselected
1614
1615 `:help HELP-STRING'.
1616
1617 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
1618 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
1619
1620 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
1621
1622 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
1623 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
1624 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
1625
1626 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
1627 raised when the mouse moves over them.
1628
1629 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
1630 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
1631 pixels. Default is 1.
1632
1633 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
1634 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
1635
1636 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
1637
1638 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
1639 a tool bar item. If
1640
1641 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
1642 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
1643 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
1644
1645 is the original tool bar item definition, then
1646
1647 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
1648
1649 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
1650 item.
1651
1652 ** Mode line changes.
1653
1654 +++
1655 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
1656
1657 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
1658 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
1659 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
1660
1661 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
1662 a `local-map' text property.
1663
1664 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
1665 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
1666
1667 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
1668 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
1669 `local-map' property.
1670
1671 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
1672 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
1673 example.
1674
1675 +++
1676 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
1677 variable mode-line-format to nil.
1678
1679 +++
1680 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
1681
1682 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
1683 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
1684 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
1685 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
1686 line.
1687
1688 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
1689 `header-line'.
1690
1691 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
1692 position in the header-line.
1693
1694 +++
1695 ** Text property `display'
1696
1697 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
1698 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
1699 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
1700 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
1701
1702 *** Variable width and height spaces
1703
1704 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
1705 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
1706 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
1707 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
1708 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
1709 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
1710 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
1711
1712 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
1713 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
1714 properties described below.
1715
1716 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
1717 characters having the `display' property.
1718
1719 - :width WIDTH
1720
1721 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
1722 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
1723
1724 - :relative-width FACTOR
1725
1726 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
1727 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
1728 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
1729 width of that character by FACTOR.
1730
1731 - :align-to HPOS
1732
1733 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
1734 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
1735
1736 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
1737
1738 - :height HEIGHT
1739
1740 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
1741 normal line height.
1742
1743 - :relative-height FACTOR
1744
1745 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
1746 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
1747
1748 - :ascent ASCENT
1749
1750 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
1751 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
1752 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
1753 equal to 100.
1754
1755 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
1756
1757 *** Images
1758
1759 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
1760 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
1761 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
1762 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
1763 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
1764 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
1765 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
1766 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
1767 as display specification.
1768
1769 *** Other display properties
1770
1771 - :space-width FACTOR
1772
1773 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
1774 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
1775 integer or float.
1776
1777 - :height HEIGHT
1778
1779 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
1780
1781 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
1782 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
1783 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
1784 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
1785 a font is available counts as a step.
1786
1787 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
1788 as tall as the frame's default font.
1789
1790 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
1791 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
1792
1793 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
1794 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
1795
1796 - :raise FACTOR
1797
1798 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
1799 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
1800 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
1801 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
1802 `:height' subproperty.
1803
1804 *** Conditional display properties
1805
1806 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
1807 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
1808 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
1809 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
1810 the text having the `display' property.
1811
1812 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
1813 `(:when t SPEC)'.
1814
1815 +++
1816 ** New menu separator types.
1817
1818 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
1819 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
1820 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
1821 to specify other menu separator types.
1822
1823 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
1824
1825 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
1826 separator occurs.
1827
1828 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
1829
1830 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
1831
1832 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
1833
1834 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
1835
1836 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
1837
1838 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1839
1840 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
1841
1842 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1843
1844 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
1845
1846 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
1847 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
1848
1849 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
1850
1851 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
1852
1853 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
1854
1855 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
1856
1857 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
1858
1859 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
1860
1861 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
1862
1863 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1864
1865 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
1866
1867 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
1868
1869 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
1870
1871 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1872
1873 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
1874
1875 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
1876
1877 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
1878 the corresponding single-line separators.
1879
1880 +++
1881 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
1882
1883 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
1884 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
1885 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
1886 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
1887 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
1888 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
1889 default foreground is black.
1890
1891 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
1892 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
1893 `ScrollBarBackground').
1894
1895 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
1896 settings for scroll bar colors.
1897
1898 +++
1899 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
1900 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
1901
1902 ---
1903 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
1904 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
1905 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
1906 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
1907 the original window start.
1908
1909 ---
1910 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
1911 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
1912 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
1913
1914 +++
1915 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
1916
1917 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
1918 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
1919 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
1920 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
1921
1922 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
1923 fixed-width and fixed-height.
1924
1925 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
1926
1927 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
1928 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
1929 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
1930 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
1931 temporarily to nil, for example
1932
1933 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
1934 (enlarge-window 10))
1935
1936 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
1937 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
1938 \f
1939 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
1940
1941 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
1942
1943 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
1944 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
1945 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
1946
1947 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
1948 is the one that is used.
1949
1950 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
1951 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
1952 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
1953 separate from the command's regular output.
1954 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
1955 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
1956 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
1957 the buffer name.
1958
1959 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
1960 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
1961 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
1962 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
1963
1964 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
1965 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
1966 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
1967 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
1968
1969 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
1970 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
1971 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
1972 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
1973
1974 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
1975 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
1976 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
1977 they never ignore case.
1978
1979 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
1980 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
1981 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
1982 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
1983 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
1984 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
1985 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
1986
1987 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
1988 the same format that was used in the file before.
1989
1990 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
1991 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
1992
1993 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
1994 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
1995 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
1996
1997 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
1998 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
1999 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2000 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2001 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2002 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2003 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2004
2005 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2006 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2007 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2008 format. You can now customize these variables.
2009
2010 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2011 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2012 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2013 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2014
2015 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2016 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2017 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2018
2019 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2020 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2021 doesn't have any effect.
2022
2023 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2024 not one per buffer.
2025
2026 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2027 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2028 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2029
2030 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2031 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2032 `auto-show-mode' command.
2033
2034 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2035 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2036 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2037 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2038 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2039
2040 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2041 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2042
2043 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2044 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2045 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2046
2047 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2048 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2049 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2050 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2051
2052 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2053
2054 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2055 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2056 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2057 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2058 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2059
2060 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2061 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2062
2063 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2064 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2065 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2066 `?' on other systems.
2067
2068 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2069 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2070 Unix.
2071
2072 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2073 current codepage when it starts.
2074
2075 ** Mail changes
2076
2077 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2078 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2079 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2080 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2081 buffer-file-coding-system.
2082
2083 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2084 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2085 mail.
2086
2087 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2088 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2089 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2090 list of possible coding systems.
2091
2092 ** CC Mode changes
2093
2094 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2095 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2096 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2097 docstring for details.
2098
2099 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2100 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2101 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2102 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2103 lineup functions use this feature currently.
2104
2105 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2106 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2107
2108 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2109 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2110
2111 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2112 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2113 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2114 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2115 anonymous classes.
2116
2117 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2118 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2119
2120 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2121 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2122 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2123 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2124
2125 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2126 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2127 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2128 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2129 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2130
2131 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2132
2133 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2134
2135 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2136 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2137
2138 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2139
2140 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2141 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2142 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2143 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2144 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2145
2146 ** Gnus changes.
2147
2148 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2149 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2150 Gnus manual for the full story.
2151
2152 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2153 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2154 group, which is created automatically.
2155
2156 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2157 values.
2158
2159 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2160
2161 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2162 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2163
2164 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2165 `C-u C-c C-c'.
2166
2167 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2168
2169 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2170 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2171
2172 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2173
2174 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2175 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2176
2177 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2178 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2179
2180 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2181 control over simplification.
2182
2183 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2184
2185 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2186 limit.
2187
2188 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2189
2190 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2191
2192 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
2193 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2194 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2195
2196 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2197 `a' forces normal posting method.
2198
2199 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2200 -- `W d'.
2201
2202 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2203 to a non-nil value.
2204
2205 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2206 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2207
2208 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2209 has been added.
2210
2211 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2212
2213 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2214
2215 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2216 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2217
2218 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2219 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2220
2221 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
2222
2223 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
2224 been added.
2225
2226 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
2227 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
2228
2229 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
2230 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
2231
2232 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
2233
2234 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
2235
2236 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
2237
2238 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
2239
2240 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
2241 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
2242 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
2243
2244 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
2245 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
2246 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
2247 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
2248 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
2249
2250 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
2251 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
2252 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
2253 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
2254
2255 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
2256 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
2257 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
2258 mismatch.
2259
2260 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
2261
2262 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
2263 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
2264
2265 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
2266 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
2267 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
2268 removed from the label.
2269
2270 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
2271 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
2272
2273 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
2274 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
2275
2276 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
2277 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
2278 expressions.
2279
2280 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
2281
2282 ** New/deleted modes and packages
2283
2284 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
2285 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
2286
2287 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
2288 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
2289 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
2290
2291 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
2292 changes with a special face.
2293
2294 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
2295 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
2296 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
2297 \f
2298 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
2299
2300 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
2301 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
2302 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
2303 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
2304 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
2305
2306 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
2307 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
2308 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
2309
2310 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
2311 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
2312 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
2313 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
2314 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
2315 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
2316 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
2317 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
2318 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
2319
2320 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
2321 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
2322 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
2323 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
2324 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
2325 program.
2326
2327 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
2328 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
2329 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
2330 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
2331 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
2332 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
2333
2334 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
2335 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
2336 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
2337 was not documented clearly before.
2338
2339 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
2340 This includes Tetris and Snake.
2341 \f
2342 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
2343
2344 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
2345 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
2346 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
2347 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
2348
2349 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
2350 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
2351 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
2352
2353 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
2354
2355 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
2356 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
2357
2358 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
2359 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
2360 integers.
2361
2362 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
2363 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
2364 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
2365 file names and attributes are returned.
2366
2367 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
2368 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
2369 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
2370 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
2371 returns the result.
2372
2373 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
2374 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
2375
2376 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
2377
2378 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
2379 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
2380 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
2381 optionally.
2382
2383 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
2384 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
2385
2386 **
2387 The new function process-running-child-p
2388 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
2389 terminal to its own child process.
2390
2391 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
2392 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
2393 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
2394 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
2395
2396 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
2397 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
2398
2399 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
2400 :included is an alias for :visible.
2401
2402 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
2403 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
2404 to move or copy menu entries.
2405
2406 ** Multibyte editing changes
2407
2408 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
2409 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
2410 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
2411 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
2412 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
2413 (setq char (sref str idx)
2414 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
2415 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
2416
2417 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
2418 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
2419 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
2420
2421 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
2422 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
2423 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
2424
2425 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
2426
2427 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
2428 across the boundary.
2429
2430 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
2431 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
2432 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
2433 contains 8-bit characters.
2434 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
2435 contains invalid characters.
2436
2437 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
2438 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
2439 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
2440 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
2441 way.
2442
2443 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
2444 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
2445 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
2446 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
2447
2448 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
2449 compose Thai characters in a string.
2450
2451 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
2452 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
2453 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
2454 menus should always use the third argument.
2455
2456 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
2457 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
2458 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
2459 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
2460
2461 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
2462 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
2463 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
2464 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
2465
2466 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
2467 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
2468 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
2469 echo area contents.
2470
2471 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
2472
2473 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
2474 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
2475 requested feature cannot be loaded.
2476
2477 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
2478 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
2479 means to clear out that attribute.
2480
2481 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
2482 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
2483
2484 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
2485 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
2486 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
2487 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
2488
2489 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
2490 the gap of the current buffer.
2491
2492 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
2493 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
2494 current buffer.
2495
2496 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
2497 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
2498 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
2499 it back in after any modifications have been made.
2500 \f
2501 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
2502
2503 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
2504 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
2505 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
2506 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
2507 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
2508
2509 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
2510 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
2511 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
2512 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
2513 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
2514
2515 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
2516 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
2517 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
2518
2519 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
2520 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
2521 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
2522 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
2523 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
2524 results.
2525
2526 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
2527 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
2528 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
2529 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
2530 \f
2531 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
2532
2533 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
2534 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
2535 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
2536 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
2537
2538 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
2539 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
2540 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
2541 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
2542 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
2543 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
2544 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
2545 region.
2546
2547 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
2548 selective undo.
2549
2550 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
2551 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
2552 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
2553 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
2554 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
2555
2556 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
2557 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
2558 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
2559 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
2560
2561 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
2562 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
2563 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
2564 something that most users not do.
2565
2566 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
2567 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
2568 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
2569 applications.
2570
2571 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
2572 pasting operations.
2573
2574 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
2575 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
2576 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
2577 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
2578 `ps-printer-name'.
2579
2580 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
2581 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
2582 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
2583 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
2584 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
2585 hits a new word.
2586
2587 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
2588 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
2589 to be confused by TeX commands.
2590
2591 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
2592 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
2593 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
2594 of various alternative replacements and actions.
2595
2596 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
2597 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
2598 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
2599 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
2600 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
2601
2602 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
2603 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
2604
2605 ** Changes in input method usage.
2606
2607 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
2608 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
2609 respectively.
2610
2611 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
2612
2613 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
2614 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
2615
2616 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
2617 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
2618
2619 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
2620
2621 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
2622
2623 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
2624 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
2625
2626 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
2627 given in the following case:
2628 o When you are using a complex input method.
2629 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
2630
2631 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
2632 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
2633 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
2634 setting it to t is helpful.
2635
2636 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
2637
2638 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
2639 keys:
2640 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
2641 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
2642 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
2643 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
2644 environment.
2645
2646 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
2647 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
2648 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
2649 get
2650
2651 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
2652
2653 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
2654
2655 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
2656 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
2657
2658 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
2659 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
2660 its owner and group.
2661
2662 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
2663 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
2664
2665 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
2666 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
2667
2668 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
2669 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
2670 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
2671 by the left edge of the rectangle.
2672
2673 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
2674 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
2675 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
2676 for writing keyboard macros.
2677
2678 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
2679 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
2680 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
2681 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
2682 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
2683 info.
2684
2685 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
2686
2687 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
2688 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
2689 contents only.
2690
2691 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
2692 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
2693 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
2694 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
2695
2696 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
2697 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
2698 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
2699
2700 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
2701 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
2702 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
2703 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
2704
2705 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
2706 failure if the command produces no output.
2707
2708 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
2709 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
2710 the mouse.
2711
2712 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
2713 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
2714 function and variable names.
2715
2716 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
2717 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
2718 file-coding-system-alist.
2719
2720 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
2721 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
2722 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
2723 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
2724 according to the current fontset.
2725
2726 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
2727
2728 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
2729 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
2730 nonascii-insert-offset.
2731
2732 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
2733 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
2734 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
2735 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
2736
2737 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
2738 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
2739
2740 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
2741 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
2742
2743 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
2744 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
2745 command keys.
2746
2747 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
2748 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
2749
2750 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
2751 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
2752 all variables that have documentation.
2753
2754 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
2755 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
2756 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
2757 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
2758 it should show; the default is 20.
2759
2760 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
2761 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
2762 of your input.
2763
2764 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
2765 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
2766 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
2767 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
2768 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
2769 Newly added options are included as well.
2770
2771 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
2772 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
2773 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
2774
2775 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
2776 Customize menu.
2777
2778 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
2779 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
2780
2781 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
2782 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
2783 invoked.
2784
2785 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
2786 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
2787 The default is 1.
2788
2789 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
2790 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
2791 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
2792 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
2793 sensibly.
2794
2795 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
2796
2797 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
2798 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
2799 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
2800
2801 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
2802 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
2803 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
2804 every night.
2805
2806 ** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
2807 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
2808
2809 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
2810 read and post multi-lingual articles.
2811
2812 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
2813 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
2814 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
2815 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
2816 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
2817 made invisible again.
2818
2819 ** Mail reading and sending changes
2820
2821 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
2822 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
2823 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
2824 toggle.
2825
2826 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
2827 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
2828 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
2829 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
2830 rmail-default-body-file.
2831
2832 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
2833 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
2834 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
2835
2836 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
2837 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
2838 is evaluated to insert the signature.
2839
2840 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
2841 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
2842 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
2843 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
2844 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
2845 especially interested in trying feedmail.
2846
2847 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
2848 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
2849 provided by feedmail are:
2850
2851 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
2852 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
2853 there is also a queue for draft messages
2854
2855 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
2856 be prompted for confirmation
2857
2858 **** does smart filling of address headers
2859
2860 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
2861 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
2862 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
2863
2864 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
2865 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
2866 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
2867 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
2868
2869 ** Dired changes
2870
2871 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
2872 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
2873
2874 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
2875 run Dired on the directory name at point.
2876
2877 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
2878 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
2879 for a specified regexp.
2880
2881 ** VC Changes
2882
2883 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
2884 conveniently.
2885
2886 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
2887 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
2888 Dired.
2889
2890 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
2891 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
2892 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
2893 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
2894
2895 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
2896 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
2897 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
2898 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
2899 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
2900
2901 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
2902 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
2903 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
2904 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
2905 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
2906
2907 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
2908 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
2909 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
2910 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
2911
2912 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
2913 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
2914 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
2915
2916 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
2917 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
2918 session to resolve them.
2919
2920 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
2921 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
2922 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
2923 uses as well).
2924
2925 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
2926 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
2927 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
2928 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
2929 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
2930 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
2931 using ediff.
2932
2933 ** Changes in Font Lock
2934
2935 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
2936 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
2937 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
2938 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
2939 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
2940
2941 ** Frame name display changes
2942
2943 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
2944 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
2945 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
2946 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
2947
2948 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
2949 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
2950 menu.
2951
2952 ** Comint (subshell) changes
2953
2954 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
2955 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
2956 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
2957
2958 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
2959
2960 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
2961 that is, the line after the last line you got.
2962 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
2963
2964 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
2965 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
2966 the following line.
2967
2968 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
2969 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
2970 previously sent input.
2971
2972 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
2973 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
2974 as the search string.
2975
2976 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
2977 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
2978
2979 ** C mode changes
2980
2981 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
2982 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
2983 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
2984 definition.
2985
2986 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
2987 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
2988 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
2989 style is still the default however.
2990
2991 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
2992
2993 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
2994 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
2995 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
2996
2997 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
2998 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
2999
3000 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3001 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3002
3003 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3004 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3005
3006 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3007 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3008
3009 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3010 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3011 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3012 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3013
3014 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
3015
3016 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
3017 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3018 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3019
3020 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3021 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3022 expanding dynamically.
3023
3024 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3025 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3026
3027 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3028 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3029 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3030 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3031
3032 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3033
3034 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3035
3036 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3037 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3038 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3039 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3040 against the first word in the title.
3041
3042 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3043 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3044 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
3045 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
3046 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
3047 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
3048
3049 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3050 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3051 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3052 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3053
3054 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
3055
3056 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3057 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3058 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3059 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3060 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3061 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3062
3063 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3064 Editing group once the package is loaded.
3065
3066 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3067 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3068 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3069
3070 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3071 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3072
3073 ** Ispell changes.
3074
3075 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3076 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
3077 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3078
3079 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
3080 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3081 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3082 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
3083 include:
3084
3085 o URLs are automatically skipped
3086 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3087
3088 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3089
3090 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3091
3092 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3093 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3094 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3095 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3096
3097 *** New recursive parser.
3098
3099 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3100 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3101 recursive parser scans the individual files.
3102
3103 *** Parsing only part of a document.
3104
3105 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3106 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3107 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3108
3109 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3110
3111 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
3112
3113 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3114
3115 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3116
3117 *** Using multiple selection buffers
3118
3119 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3120 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3121
3122 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3123
3124 *** References to external documents.
3125
3126 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3127 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3128 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3129 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3130 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3131 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3132 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3133
3134 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3135
3136 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3137 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3138
3139 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3140 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3141
3142 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3143
3144 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3145 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3146
3147 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3148
3149 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3150 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3151 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3152 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3153 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3154 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3155 more.
3156
3157 *** Support for the varioref package
3158
3159 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3160
3161 *** New hooks
3162
3163 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3164 and citations are created. These hooks are
3165 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3166 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
3167
3168 *** Citations outside LaTeX
3169
3170 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3171 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3172
3173 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
3174
3175 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3176 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3177 fontified, use
3178
3179 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3180
3181 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3182 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3183 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3184 directories that contain the same file name.
3185
3186 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3187 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3188 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3189 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3190 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3191 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3192 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3193 directory.
3194
3195 ** New modes and packages
3196
3197 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3198 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3199 it, but some do not.
3200
3201 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3202 code.
3203
3204 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3205 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3206 around in a buffer.
3207
3208 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3209
3210 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3211 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3212 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3213 established system of notation similar to Chess.
3214
3215 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3216 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3217 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3218
3219 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3220 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
3221 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
3222 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
3223 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
3224 the like.
3225
3226 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
3227 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
3228
3229 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
3230 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
3231 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
3232 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
3233
3234 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
3235
3236 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
3237 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
3238 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
3239 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
3240 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
3241 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
3242 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
3243 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
3244 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
3245 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
3246 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
3247
3248 Platform-specific modes:
3249
3250 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
3251 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
3252 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
3253 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
3254 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
3255 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
3256 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
3257 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
3258 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
3259 \f
3260 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3261
3262 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
3263 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
3264 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
3265 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
3266
3267 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
3268 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
3269 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
3270
3271 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
3272 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
3273 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
3274 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
3275
3276 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
3277 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
3278 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
3279 environment.
3280
3281 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
3282 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
3283 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
3284 current input method for reading this one event.
3285
3286 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
3287 now control whether to output certain characters as
3288 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
3289 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
3290 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
3291 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
3292 \f
3293 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3294
3295 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
3296 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
3297
3298 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
3299 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
3300 always increases point by 1.
3301
3302 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
3303 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
3304
3305 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
3306
3307 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
3308 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
3309 default value changed. For example,
3310
3311 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
3312 :type 'integer
3313 :group 'foo
3314 :version "20.3")
3315
3316 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
3317 :version "20.3")
3318
3319 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
3320 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
3321 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
3322 `:version' in the top level group.
3323
3324 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
3325
3326 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
3327 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
3328
3329 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
3330 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
3331 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
3332 to themselves.
3333
3334 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
3335 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
3336 values whatever.
3337
3338 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
3339 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
3340 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
3341
3342 ** Frame-local variables.
3343
3344 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
3345 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
3346 local bindings for that variable.
3347
3348 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
3349 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
3350 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
3351 parameter name.
3352
3353 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
3354 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
3355 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
3356 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
3357
3358 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
3359 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
3360 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
3361 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
3362
3363 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
3364 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
3365 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
3366 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
3367 See the documentation in sregex.el.
3368
3369 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
3370 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
3371 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
3372 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
3373
3374 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
3375 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
3376
3377 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
3378 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
3379 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
3380
3381 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
3382 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
3383 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
3384 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
3385
3386 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
3387 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
3388 empty input.
3389
3390 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
3391 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
3392 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
3393 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
3394 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
3395
3396 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
3397 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
3398 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
3399 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
3400
3401 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
3402 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
3403 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
3404 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
3405 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
3406
3407 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
3408 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
3409 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
3410 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
3411
3412 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
3413 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
3414 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
3415
3416 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
3417 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
3418 was directed to display this buffer.
3419
3420 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
3421 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
3422 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
3423 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
3424 set-window-configuration.
3425
3426 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
3427 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
3428 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
3429 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
3430
3431 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
3432 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
3433 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
3434
3435 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
3436 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
3437 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
3438
3439 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
3440 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
3441
3442 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
3443 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
3444
3445 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
3446 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
3447 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
3448
3449 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
3450 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
3451 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
3452 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
3453
3454 ** Menu changes
3455
3456 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
3457 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
3458 better supported.
3459
3460 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
3461 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
3462 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
3463 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
3464 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
3465
3466 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
3467
3468 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
3469 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
3470 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
3471 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
3472
3473 The format is:
3474 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
3475 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
3476 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
3477 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
3478 The supported properties include
3479
3480 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3481 item is enabled.
3482 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3483 item should appear in the menu.
3484 :filter FILTER-FN
3485 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
3486 which will be REAL-BINDING.
3487 It should return a binding to use instead.
3488 :keys DESCRIPTION
3489 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
3490 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
3491 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
3492 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
3493 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
3494 keyboard binding.
3495 :key-sequence nil
3496 This means that the command normally has no
3497 keyboard equivalent.
3498 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
3499 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
3500 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
3501 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
3502 value says whether this button is currently selected.
3503
3504 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
3505 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
3506
3507 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
3508
3509 ** New event types
3510
3511 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
3512 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
3513 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
3514 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
3515
3516 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
3517
3518 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3519 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
3520 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
3521 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
3522 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
3523 forward, away from the user.
3524
3525 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3526
3527 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
3528 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
3529 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
3530 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
3531 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
3532
3533 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
3534
3535 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3536 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
3537 that were dragged and dropped.
3538
3539 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3540
3541 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
3542
3543 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
3544 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
3545 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
3546
3547 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
3548 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
3549 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
3550
3551 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
3552 in Emacs 19 and before.
3553
3554 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
3555 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
3556
3557 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
3558 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
3559 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
3560 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
3561
3562 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
3563 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
3564 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
3565 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
3566 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
3567
3568 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
3569 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
3570 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
3571 consistent with the new representation.
3572
3573 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
3574 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
3575 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
3576 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3577
3578 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
3579 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
3580 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
3581
3582 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
3583 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
3584 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3585
3586 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
3587 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
3588 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
3589
3590 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3591 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
3592
3593 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3594 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
3595
3596 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
3597 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
3598 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
3599 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
3600
3601 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
3602 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
3603
3604 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
3605 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
3606 buffer or string being searched.
3607
3608 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
3609 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
3610 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
3611 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
3612 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
3613 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
3614 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
3615
3616 *** Structure of coding system changed.
3617
3618 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
3619 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
3620 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
3621 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
3622 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
3623 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
3624 define-coding-system-alias.
3625
3626 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
3627 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
3628 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
3629 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
3630 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
3631 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
3632 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
3633 `iso-8859-1'.
3634
3635 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
3636 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
3637 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
3638 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
3639
3640 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
3641 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
3642 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
3643 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
3644
3645 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
3646 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
3647 This function requires a user interaction.
3648
3649 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
3650 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
3651 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
3652 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
3653 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
3654 select-safe-coding-system.
3655
3656 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
3657 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
3658 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
3659 was done.
3660
3661 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
3662 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
3663 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
3664
3665 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
3666 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
3667 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
3668 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
3669
3670 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
3671 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
3672 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
3673 converted.
3674
3675 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
3676 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
3677
3678 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
3679 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
3680 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
3681 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
3682 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
3683 range of characters.
3684
3685 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
3686 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
3687
3688 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
3689 in the current buffer at position POS.
3690
3691 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
3692 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
3693 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
3694 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
3695 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
3696 binding input-method-function to nil.
3697
3698 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
3699 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
3700 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
3701 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
3702 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
3703
3704 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
3705 subsequent events of a key sequence.
3706
3707 *** You can customize any language environment by using
3708 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
3709
3710 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
3711 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
3712 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
3713 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
3714 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
3715 \f
3716 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
3717
3718 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
3719 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
3720 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
3721 tree structure.
3722
3723 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
3724 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
3725
3726 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
3727 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
3728 in your .emacs file.)
3729
3730 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
3731 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
3732
3733 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
3734 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
3735
3736 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
3737 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
3738 kills the region.
3739
3740 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
3741 delete the character before point, as usual.
3742
3743 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
3744 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
3745 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
3746
3747 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
3748 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
3749 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
3750 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
3751 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
3752 past.)
3753
3754 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
3755 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
3756 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
3757 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
3758 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
3759
3760 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
3761 and is an alias for it.
3762
3763 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
3764 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
3765
3766 ** Scrolling changes
3767
3768 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
3769 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
3770
3771 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
3772 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
3773 where it started.
3774
3775 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
3776 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
3777 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
3778 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
3779
3780 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
3781 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
3782 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
3783 recenters the window.
3784
3785 ** International character set support (MULE)
3786
3787 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
3788 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
3789 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
3790 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
3791 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
3792 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
3793
3794 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
3795 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
3796 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
3797 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
3798 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
3799
3800 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
3801 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
3802 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
3803 language, to make it possible to type them.
3804
3805 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
3806 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
3807
3808 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
3809 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
3810
3811 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
3812
3813 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
3814
3815 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
3816 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
3817 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
3818 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
3819 characters for their work until they want to change.
3820
3821 *** Input methods
3822
3823 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
3824 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
3825 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
3826 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
3827 support several input methods.
3828
3829 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
3830 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
3831 work.
3832
3833 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
3834 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
3835 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
3836 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
3837 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
3838 letter.
3839
3840 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
3841 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
3842 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
3843 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
3844 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
3845
3846 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
3847 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
3848 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
3849 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
3850
3851 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
3852 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
3853 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
3854 the first guess is wrong.
3855
3856 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
3857 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
3858
3859 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
3860 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
3861 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
3862 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
3863
3864 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
3865 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
3866 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
3867 translate automatically to and from either one.
3868
3869 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
3870
3871 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
3872 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
3873 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
3874 what you want.
3875
3876 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
3877 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
3878 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
3879 multibyte characters in that buffer.
3880
3881 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
3882 character conversion as well.
3883
3884 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
3885
3886 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
3887 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
3888 requires using many fonts.
3889
3890 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
3891 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
3892
3893 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
3894 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
3895 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
3896 you would use a font.
3897
3898 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
3899 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
3900 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
3901
3902 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
3903 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
3904 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
3905 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
3906 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
3907
3908 *** Defining fontsets.
3909
3910 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
3911 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
3912 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
3913
3914 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
3915 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
3916 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
3917 standard fontset are created automatically.
3918
3919 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
3920 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
3921 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
3922 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
3923 name is `fontset-startup'.
3924
3925 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
3926 The resource value should have this form:
3927 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
3928 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
3929 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
3930 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
3931 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
3932 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
3933 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
3934 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
3935 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
3936
3937 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
3938 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
3939 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
3940
3941 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
3942 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
3943 following resource,
3944 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
3945 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
3946 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
3947 Here is the substitution rule:
3948 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
3949 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
3950 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
3951 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
3952 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
3953
3954 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
3955 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
3956 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
3957
3958 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
3959 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
3960 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
3961 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
3962 fontsets.
3963
3964 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
3965 defaults for a particular choice of language.
3966
3967 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
3968 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
3969 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
3970 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
3971 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
3972 system for new files that you create.
3973
3974 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
3975 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
3976 whole Emacs session.
3977
3978 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
3979 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
3980 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
3981
3982 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
3983 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
3984 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
3985 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
3986 coding systems that Emacs supports.
3987
3988 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
3989 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
3990 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
3991 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
3992 is used for *the immediately following command*.
3993
3994 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
3995 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
3996
3997 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
3998 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
3999
4000 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4001 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4002
4003 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4004 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4005 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4006 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4007 of the file.
4008
4009 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4010 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4011 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4012 translated into that character code.
4013
4014 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4015 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4016
4017 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4018
4019 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4020 the coding system for keyboard input.
4021
4022 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4023 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4024 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4025
4026 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4027
4028 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4029 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4030 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4031 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4032 designed to work with terminals.
4033
4034 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4035 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4036 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4037 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4038 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4039 in the corresponding buffer.
4040
4041 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4042
4043 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4044 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4045 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4046
4047 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4048 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4049 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4050 want to use.
4051
4052 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4053 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4054
4055 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4056 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4057 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4058 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4059
4060 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4061 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4062 related information.
4063
4064 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4065 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4066 scripts.
4067
4068 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4069 information about the support for a particular language.
4070 You specify the language as an argument.
4071
4072 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4073 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4074 first dash.
4075
4076 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4077 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4078 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
4079 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4080
4081 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4082 B big5 (Chinese)
4083 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4084 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4085 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4086 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4087 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4088 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4089 K euc-korea (Korean)
4090 R koi8 (Russian)
4091 Q tibetan
4092 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4093 T lao
4094 T tis620 (Thai)
4095 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4096 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4097 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4098 v viqr (Vietnamese)
4099 z hz (Chinese)
4100
4101 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4102 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4103 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4104 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4105
4106 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4107 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4108
4109 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4110 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4111 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4112 Rmail files themselves.
4113
4114 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4115 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4116
4117 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4118 for sending mail:
4119
4120 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4121 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4122 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4123 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4124 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4125
4126 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4127 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4128 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4129 translations.
4130
4131 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4132 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4133 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4134 without any conversion.
4135
4136 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4137 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4138 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4139 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4140
4141 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4142 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4143
4144 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4145 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4146
4147 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4148 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4149
4150 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4151 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4152 in the buffer before point.
4153
4154 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4155 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4156 you are using.
4157
4158 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4159 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4160
4161 ** File locking works with NFS now.
4162
4163 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4164 in the same directory as FILENAME.
4165
4166 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4167 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4168 can become a bottleneck.
4169
4170 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4171 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4172 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4173 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4174 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4175 so useful that the change is worth while.
4176
4177 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4178 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4179 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4180 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4181
4182 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4183 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4184 show-paren-mode.
4185
4186 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4187 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4188 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4189
4190 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4191 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4192 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4193
4194 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4195 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4196 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4197
4198 ** Changes in View mode.
4199
4200 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4201 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4202
4203 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4204 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4205
4206 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4207 previous state.
4208
4209 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4210 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4211
4212 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4213 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4214 not just the selected window.
4215
4216 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4217 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4218 turns View mode on or off.
4219
4220 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
4221 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
4222 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
4223
4224 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
4225 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
4226
4227 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
4228 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
4229 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
4230 which version to compare with.
4231
4232 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
4233 blocks if a match is inside the block.
4234
4235 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
4236 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
4237 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
4238 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
4239
4240 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
4241 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
4242 blocks, all of them or none.
4243
4244 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
4245 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
4246 confirmation first.
4247
4248 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
4249 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
4250 However, the mode will not be changed if
4251 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
4252 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
4253 not suitable for ordinary files, or
4254 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
4255
4256 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
4257
4258 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
4259 these commands do not change the major mode.
4260
4261 ** M-x occur changes.
4262
4263 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
4264 it performs a case-sensitive search.
4265
4266 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
4267 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
4268 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
4269
4270 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
4271 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
4272 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
4273 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
4274 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
4275
4276 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
4277 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
4278 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
4279 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
4280
4281 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4282 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
4283 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
4284
4285 ** Outline mode changes.
4286
4287 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
4288
4289 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
4290
4291 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
4292 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
4293 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
4294 was already active.
4295
4296 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
4297 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
4298 get confused by it.
4299
4300 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
4301 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
4302
4303 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
4304
4305 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4306 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
4307 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
4308 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
4309
4310 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
4311 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
4312 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
4313
4314 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
4315 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
4316 values.
4317
4318 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
4319 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
4320 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
4321 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
4322
4323 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
4324 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
4325 can be. The default value is 30.
4326
4327 ** Changes in Mail mode.
4328
4329 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
4330 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
4331 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
4332 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
4333 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
4334 behavior.
4335
4336 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
4337 compose-mail-other-frame.
4338
4339 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
4340 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
4341 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
4342 buffer that shows the original message.
4343
4344 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
4345 with separator lines around the contents.
4346
4347 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
4348 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
4349 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
4350 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
4351
4352 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
4353
4354 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
4355 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
4356 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
4357 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
4358
4359 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
4360 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
4361 /etc/passwd.
4362
4363 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
4364 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
4365 /etc/passwd.
4366
4367 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
4368 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
4369 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
4370 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
4371
4372 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
4373 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
4374 be taken to be magic.
4375
4376 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
4377 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
4378 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
4379
4380 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
4381 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
4382
4383 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
4384 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
4385
4386 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
4387
4388 new key dired.el binding old key
4389 ------- ---------------- -------
4390 * c dired-change-marks c
4391 * m dired-mark m
4392 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
4393 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
4394 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
4395 * u dired-unmark u
4396 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
4397 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
4398 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
4399 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
4400 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
4401 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
4402
4403 ** Rmail changes.
4404
4405 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
4406 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
4407 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
4408 each time you run it.
4409
4410 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
4411 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
4412
4413 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
4414 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
4415 means to move in the opposite direction.
4416
4417 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
4418 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
4419
4420 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
4421 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
4422 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
4423 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
4424 for output.
4425
4426 ** Gnus changes.
4427
4428 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
4429
4430 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
4431 Gnus.
4432
4433 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
4434 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
4435
4436 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
4437 article mode line.
4438
4439 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
4440
4441 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
4442
4443 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
4444
4445 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
4446 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
4447 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
4448
4449 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
4450
4451 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
4452
4453 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
4454 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
4455
4456 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
4457 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
4458 used to pick articles.
4459
4460 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
4461 another have been added.
4462
4463 `M-x gnus-change-server'
4464
4465 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
4466 generating lines in buffers.
4467
4468 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
4469 `M-C-_'.
4470
4471 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
4472
4473 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
4474
4475 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
4476
4477 *** Scores can be decayed.
4478
4479 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
4480
4481 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
4482 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
4483
4484 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
4485 the native server.
4486
4487 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
4488
4489 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
4490 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
4491
4492 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
4493
4494 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
4495 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
4496
4497 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
4498 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
4499
4500 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
4501 a group.
4502
4503 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
4504 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
4505
4506 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
4507
4508 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
4509
4510 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
4511
4512 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
4513
4514 Use the `Y c' command.
4515
4516 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
4517
4518 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
4519
4520 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
4521
4522 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
4523 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
4524
4525 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
4526
4527 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
4528
4529 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
4530 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
4531
4532 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
4533
4534 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
4535 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
4536 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
4537 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
4538 this issue.)
4539
4540 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
4541 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
4542 particular news group. This can be done by:
4543
4544 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
4545
4546 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
4547 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
4548 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
4549 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
4550 for reading and posting).
4551
4552 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
4553 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
4554 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
4555 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
4556 there.
4557
4558 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
4559 default. Here are some of these default settings:
4560
4561 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
4562 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
4563 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
4564 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
4565 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
4566
4567 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
4568 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
4569
4570 ** CC mode changes.
4571
4572 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
4573 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
4574 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
4575 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
4576 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
4577 loaded.
4578
4579 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
4580 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
4581 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
4582 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
4583 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
4584 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
4585
4586 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
4587 of the current buffer.
4588
4589 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
4590 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
4591 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
4592
4593 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
4594 style that the Python developers like.
4595
4596 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
4597 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
4598 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
4599
4600 ** VC Changes [new]
4601
4602 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
4603 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
4604 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
4605
4606 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
4607 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
4608 developers.
4609
4610 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
4611 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
4612
4613 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
4614 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
4615 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
4616 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
4617
4618 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
4619 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
4620
4621 ** Calendar changes.
4622
4623 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
4624 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
4625 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
4626
4627 ** ps-print changes
4628
4629 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
4630
4631 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
4632
4633 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
4634 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
4635 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
4636 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
4637 It defaults to `letter'.
4638 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
4639
4640 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
4641 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
4642 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
4643
4644 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
4645 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
4646 It defaults to 1.
4647
4648 *** Horizontal layout
4649
4650 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
4651 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
4652 All are measured in points.
4653
4654 *** Vertical layout
4655
4656 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
4657 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
4658 All are measured in points.
4659
4660 *** Headers
4661
4662 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
4663 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
4664 margin above the text.
4665
4666 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
4667 framing box is printed around the header.
4668
4669 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
4670 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
4671
4672 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
4673 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
4674 `ps-header-font-size'.
4675
4676 *** Font managing
4677
4678 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
4679 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
4680 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
4681 elements to this alist.
4682
4683 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
4684 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
4685
4686 ** hideshow changes.
4687
4688 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
4689 C++, ; for lisp).
4690
4691 *** Support for java-mode added.
4692
4693 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
4694 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
4695
4696 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
4697 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
4698 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
4699
4700 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
4701 robust and a lot faster.
4702
4703 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
4704
4705 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
4706 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
4707 documentation for more details.
4708
4709 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
4710
4711 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
4712 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
4713 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
4714 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
4715 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
4716
4717 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
4718 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
4719 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
4720 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
4721
4722 ** Font Lock mode
4723
4724 *** Custom support
4725
4726 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
4727 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
4728 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
4729 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
4730 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
4731 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
4732
4733 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
4734
4735 *** Maximum decoration
4736
4737 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
4738 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
4739 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
4740 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
4741 to get the old behavior.
4742
4743 *** New support
4744
4745 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
4746
4747 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
4748 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
4749
4750 *** Configurable support
4751
4752 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
4753 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
4754 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
4755 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
4756 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
4757 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
4758 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
4759
4760 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
4761 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
4762 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
4763
4764 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
4765
4766 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
4767 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
4768 for any mode.
4769
4770 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
4771
4772 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
4773
4774 in your ~/.emacs.
4775
4776 *** New faces
4777
4778 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
4779 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
4780 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
4781 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
4782
4783 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
4784
4785 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
4786 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
4787 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
4788
4789 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
4790
4791 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
4792 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
4793 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
4794 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
4795 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
4796 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
4797 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
4798
4799 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
4800 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
4801 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
4802 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
4803 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
4804 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
4805
4806 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
4807
4808 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
4809 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
4810 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
4811 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
4812
4813 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
4814 settings.
4815
4816 ** Ada mode changes.
4817
4818 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
4819 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
4820 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
4821 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
4822 stubs.
4823
4824 *** There are two new commands:
4825 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
4826 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
4827
4828 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
4829 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
4830 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
4831
4832 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
4833 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
4834 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
4835
4836 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
4837 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
4838 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
4839 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
4840
4841 ** Scheme mode changes.
4842
4843 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
4844 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
4845 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
4846 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
4847 have any effect.
4848
4849 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
4850 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
4851 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
4852 variables as buffer-local variables.
4853
4854 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
4855 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
4856
4857 ** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
4858 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
4859 buffer in Emacs.
4860
4861 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
4862 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
4863 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
4864
4865 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
4866 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
4867 the current defun.
4868
4869 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
4870 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
4871
4872 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
4873 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
4874 necessary).
4875
4876 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
4877 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
4878 these register values no longer become completely useless.
4879 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
4880 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
4881 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
4882
4883 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
4884 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
4885 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
4886 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
4887
4888 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
4889 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
4890 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
4891 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
4892 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
4893
4894 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
4895 since it applies only to the current frame.
4896
4897 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
4898 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
4899 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
4900
4901 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
4902 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
4903 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
4904 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
4905 instead of just the file you are editing.
4906
4907 ** RefTeX mode
4908
4909 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
4910 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
4911 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
4912 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
4913 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
4914
4915 C-c ( reftex-label
4916 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
4917 knows which kind of label is needed.
4918
4919 C-c ) reftex-reference
4920 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
4921 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
4922
4923 C-c [ reftex-citation
4924 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
4925 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
4926
4927 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
4928 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
4929
4930 C-c = reftex-toc
4931 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
4932 can quickly jump to every section.
4933
4934 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
4935 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
4936 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
4937 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
4938 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
4939
4940 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4941
4942 *** Info documentation is now available.
4943
4944 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
4945 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
4946
4947 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
4948 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
4949
4950 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
4951 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
4952
4953 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
4954 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
4955 appropriate functions.
4956
4957 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
4958 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
4959
4960 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
4961 been cleaned.
4962
4963 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
4964 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
4965
4966 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
4967 shall be delimited.
4968
4969 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
4970 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
4971 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
4972
4973 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
4974 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
4975 prefixed with `ALT'.
4976
4977 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
4978 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
4979 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
4980 documentation).
4981
4982 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
4983 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
4984 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
4985
4986 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
4987 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
4988
4989 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
4990 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
4991 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
4992
4993 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
4994
4995 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
4996
4997 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
4998 from alien sources.
4999
5000 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5001 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5002 crossref entries.
5003
5004 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5005 region.
5006
5007 *** Added support for imenu.
5008
5009 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5010 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5011 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5012 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5013
5014 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5015 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5016
5017 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5018
5019 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5020 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5021 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5022 as an argument.
5023
5024 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5025 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5026
5027 ** browse-url changes
5028
5029 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5030 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5031 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5032 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5033 customization variables.
5034
5035 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5036
5037 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5038 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5039 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5040
5041 ** Changes in Ediff
5042
5043 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5044 pops up the Info file for this command.
5045
5046 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5047 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5048 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
5049 directories).
5050
5051 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
5052 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
5053 files in the same directory.
5054
5055 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
5056 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5057 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5058
5059 ** Changes in Viper
5060
5061 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
5062 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
5063 instead of vip-.
5064 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
5065 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
5066 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5067 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5068 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5069 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5070 color when Viper is in insert state.
5071 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5072 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5073 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5074
5075 ** Etags changes.
5076
5077 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5078 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5079 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5080 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5081 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5082
5083 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5084
5085 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5086 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5087
5088 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5089 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5090 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5091
5092 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5093 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5094 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5095 methods and protocols.
5096
5097 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5098 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5099 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5100 paragraph name.
5101
5102 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5103 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5104 at least M times and as many as N times.
5105
5106 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5107 in files has changed slightly.
5108
5109 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5110 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5111 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5112 with old time-stamp-format values.
5113
5114 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5115 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5116 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5117 reasons.
5118
5119 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5120 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5121 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5122 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5123 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5124 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5125
5126 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5127 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5128 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5129
5130 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5131 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5132 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5133 recommended now will continue to work then.
5134
5135 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5136 details.
5137
5138 ** There are some additional major modes:
5139
5140 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5141 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5142 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5143
5144 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5145 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5146 into Emacs.
5147
5148 ** New Lisp packages include:
5149
5150 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5151
5152 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5153 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5154
5155 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5156
5157 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5158 in shell buffers.
5159
5160 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5161 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5162 and `elint-defun'.
5163
5164 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5165 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5166 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5167 strings or comments.
5168
5169 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5170 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5171 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5172 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5173 at these points.
5174
5175 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5176 can visit them by short forms of their names.
5177
5178 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5179 Emacs Lisp function at point.
5180
5181 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5182
5183 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5184 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5185
5186 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5187
5188 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5189
5190 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5191
5192 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5193 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5194
5195 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5196 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5197 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5198 original place after inserting the copy.
5199
5200 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5201 on the buffer.
5202
5203 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5204 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5205 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5206
5207 Enable mouse-drag with:
5208 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
5209 -or-
5210 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
5211
5212 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
5213 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
5214
5215 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
5216 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
5217
5218 *** ogonek
5219
5220 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
5221 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
5222 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
5223 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
5224 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
5225 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
5226 instance) and vice versa.
5227
5228 To use this package load it using
5229 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
5230 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
5231 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
5232 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
5233 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
5234 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
5235
5236 *** Interface to ph.
5237
5238 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
5239
5240 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
5241 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
5242 these servers.
5243
5244 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
5245
5246 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
5247 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
5248 while the real cursor does not move.
5249
5250 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
5251 for visiting your favorite web sites.
5252
5253 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
5254 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
5255
5256 ** movemail change
5257
5258 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
5259 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
5260 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
5261 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
5262
5263 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
5264 \f
5265 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
5266
5267 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
5268
5269 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
5270 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
5271 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
5272 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
5273 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
5274
5275 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
5276 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
5277 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
5278 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
5279 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
5280 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
5281 \f
5282 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
5283
5284 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
5285 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
5286 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
5287 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
5288
5289 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
5290 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
5291
5292 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
5293 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
5294 "win".
5295
5296 ** Basic Lisp changes
5297
5298 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
5299 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
5300
5301 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
5302 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
5303 or by the user.
5304
5305 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
5306
5307 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
5308
5309 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
5310 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
5311
5312 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
5313 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
5314 its argument.
5315
5316 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
5317
5318 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
5319
5320 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
5321
5322 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
5323 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
5324 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
5325 `format' function.
5326
5327 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
5328 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
5329 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
5330
5331 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
5332 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
5333 adding one of these suffixes.
5334
5335 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
5336 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
5337 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
5338
5339 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
5340 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
5341
5342 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
5343
5344 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
5345 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
5346
5347 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
5348 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
5349
5350 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
5351
5352 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
5353 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
5354
5355 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
5356 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
5357 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
5358 works using `save-current-buffer'.
5359
5360 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
5361 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
5362 of the last form.
5363
5364 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
5365 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
5366 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
5367 as the last form.
5368
5369 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
5370 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
5371 matches.
5372
5373 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
5374
5375 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
5376 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
5377 Then it returns that string.
5378
5379 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
5380
5381 (with-output-to-string
5382 (princ "The buffer is ")
5383 (princ (buffer-name)))
5384
5385 returns "The buffer is foo".
5386
5387 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
5388 is non-nil.
5389
5390 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
5391 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
5392 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
5393
5394 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
5395 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
5396
5397 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
5398 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
5399 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
5400 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
5401 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
5402 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
5403
5404 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
5405 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
5406 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
5407 characters".
5408
5409 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
5410 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
5411 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
5412 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
5413 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
5414
5415 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
5416 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
5417 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
5418 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
5419
5420 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
5421 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
5422
5423 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
5424
5425 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
5426 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
5427 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
5428 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
5429 guaranteed.
5430
5431 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
5432 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
5433 character).
5434
5435 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
5436
5437 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
5438 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
5439 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
5440 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
5441 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
5442
5443 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
5444
5445 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
5446 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
5447 more than the number of characters.
5448
5449 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
5450 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
5451 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
5452 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
5453 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
5454 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
5455
5456 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
5457 and returns a string containing those characters.
5458
5459 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
5460 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
5461 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
5462 character, sref signals an error.
5463
5464 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
5465 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
5466 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5467
5468 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
5469 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
5470 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5471
5472 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
5473 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
5474 to a vector of the characters in it.
5475
5476 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
5477 of a string. You call it as follows:
5478
5479 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
5480
5481 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
5482 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
5483 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
5484 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
5485 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
5486
5487 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
5488 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5489
5490 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
5491 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5492
5493 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
5494 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
5495 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
5496 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
5497
5498 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
5499
5500 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
5501
5502 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
5503 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
5504 are not included in the resulting value.
5505
5506 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
5507 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
5508 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
5509 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
5510
5511 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
5512 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
5513 character extends across that column), then the padding character
5514 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
5515 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
5516 column START-COLUMN.
5517
5518 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
5519 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
5520 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
5521 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
5522 changed text, before the change.
5523
5524 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
5525 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
5526 one character set for each script, not for each language.
5527
5528 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
5529
5530 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
5531
5532 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
5533 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
5534
5535 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
5536 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
5537 which identify the character within that character set.
5538
5539 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
5540 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
5541 opposite of split-char.
5542
5543 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
5544 of all the characters between BEG and END.
5545
5546 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
5547 of all the characters in a string.
5548
5549 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
5550 and specifying coding systems.
5551
5552 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
5553 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
5554 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
5555 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
5556 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
5557 as what to do about code conversion.)
5558
5559 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
5560 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
5561
5562 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5563 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5564 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
5565
5566 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5567 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
5568 to match against a file name.
5569
5570 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5571 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5572 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5573 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5574 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5575 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5576
5577 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5578 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5579
5580 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
5581 the coding system to use for network sockets.
5582
5583 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5584 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
5585 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
5586 service names.
5587
5588 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5589 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5590 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5591 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5592 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5593 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5594
5595 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5596 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5597
5598 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5599 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5600 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
5601 start the subprocess.
5602
5603 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
5604 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
5605 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
5606 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
5607 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
5608
5609 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
5610 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
5611 subprocess.
5612
5613 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
5614 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
5615 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
5616 connection permanently or until overridden.
5617
5618 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
5619 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
5620 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
5621 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
5622 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
5623 system for one operation at a time.
5624
5625 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
5626 files, subprocesses or network connections.
5627
5628 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
5629 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
5630 The value is a cons cell,
5631 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
5632 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
5633 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
5634 input to the subprocess.
5635
5636 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
5637 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
5638
5639 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
5640 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
5641 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
5642
5643 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
5644 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
5645 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
5646 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
5647 customization.
5648
5649 Thus, instead of writing
5650
5651 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
5652 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
5653
5654 you would now write this:
5655
5656 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
5657 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
5658 :type 'boolean
5659 :group foo)
5660
5661 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
5662 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
5663 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
5664 for a description of them.
5665
5666 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
5667 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
5668
5669 (defgroup ispell nil
5670 "Spell checking using Ispell."
5671 :group 'processes)
5672
5673 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
5674 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
5675 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
5676 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
5677 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
5678
5679 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
5680 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
5681 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
5682 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
5683 first-level subgroups.
5684
5685 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
5686
5687 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
5688 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
5689
5690 ** easy-mmode
5691
5692 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
5693 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
5694 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
5695 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
5696 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
5697 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
5698
5699 ** Text property changes
5700
5701 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
5702 text property.
5703
5704 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
5705 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
5706 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
5707 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
5708 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
5709
5710 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
5711 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
5712 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
5713 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
5714
5715 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
5716 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
5717 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
5718
5719 ** Changes in invisibility features
5720
5721 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
5722 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
5723 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
5724 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
5725 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
5726 make the overlay visible.
5727
5728 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
5729 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
5730 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
5731 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
5732 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
5733 t when it should hide it.
5734
5735 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
5736
5737 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
5738 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
5739 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
5740 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
5741 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
5742 Here is an example of how to do this:
5743
5744 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
5745 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5746 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
5747 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5748
5749 ...
5750 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
5751
5752 ...
5753 ;; When done with the overlays:
5754 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5755 ;; Or respectively:
5756 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5757
5758 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
5759
5760 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
5761 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
5762 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
5763 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
5764
5765 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
5766 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
5767 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
5768
5769 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
5770 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
5771
5772 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
5773 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
5774
5775 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
5776 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
5777 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
5778
5779 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
5780 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
5781 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
5782 determine the syntax type of the character.
5783
5784 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
5785 of the current buffer.
5786
5787 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
5788 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
5789 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
5790
5791 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
5792 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
5793 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
5794 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
5795 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
5796
5797 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
5798 text property.
5799
5800 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
5801 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
5802 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
5803
5804 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
5805 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
5806 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
5807 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
5808 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
5809
5810 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
5811 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
5812 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
5813
5814 ** Changes in face features
5815
5816 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
5817 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
5818
5819 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
5820 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
5821
5822 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
5823 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
5824
5825 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
5826 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
5827
5828 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
5829 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
5830 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
5831 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
5832 overlay property).
5833
5834 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
5835 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
5836
5837 ** Changes in file-handling functions
5838
5839 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
5840 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
5841 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
5842 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
5843
5844 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
5845 begins with ~.
5846
5847 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
5848 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
5849
5850 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
5851 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
5852
5853 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
5854 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
5855
5856 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
5857 character code conversion as well as other things.
5858
5859 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
5860 (formerly it did not).
5861
5862 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
5863 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
5864
5865 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
5866 instead of constant strings.
5867
5868 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
5869 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
5870 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
5871
5872 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
5873 in the same way as before.
5874
5875 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
5876 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
5877 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
5878
5879 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
5880 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
5881 else, and returns nil.
5882
5883 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
5884 directory cannot be listed.
5885
5886 ** Changes in minibuffer input
5887
5888 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
5889 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
5890 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
5891 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
5892 ways:
5893
5894 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
5895 It is available through the history command M-n.
5896
5897 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
5898 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
5899 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
5900 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
5901 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
5902
5903 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
5904 argument in this way.
5905
5906 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
5907 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
5908 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
5909
5910 ** Echo area features
5911
5912 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
5913 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
5914 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
5915 after the echo area is cleared.
5916
5917 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
5918 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
5919
5920 ** Keyboard input features
5921
5922 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
5923 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
5924
5925 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
5926 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
5927 by keyboard macros.
5928
5929 ** Frame-related changes
5930
5931 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
5932 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
5933 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
5934
5935 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
5936 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
5937 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
5938
5939 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5940 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
5941 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
5942 in the selected frame.
5943
5944 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
5945 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
5946 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
5947
5948 ** X Windows features
5949
5950 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
5951 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
5952 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
5953
5954 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
5955 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
5956
5957 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
5958 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
5959 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
5960
5961 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
5962 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
5963
5964 ** Subprocess features
5965
5966 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
5967 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
5968 automatically.
5969
5970 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
5971 and returns the output from the command as a string.
5972
5973 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
5974 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
5975
5976 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
5977 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
5978
5979 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
5980 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
5981 goes after the other menu items.
5982
5983 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
5984 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
5985 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
5986 are in use.
5987
5988 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
5989 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
5990
5991 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
5992 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
5993 form.
5994
5995 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
5996 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
5997 but its hook is still run.
5998
5999 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6000 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6001
6002 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6003 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6004 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6005
6006 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6007 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6008 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6009 warned.
6010
6011 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6012 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6013
6014 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6015 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6016 functions like display-time.
6017
6018 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6019 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6020
6021 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6022 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6023 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6024
6025 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6026 if there is an error in compilation.
6027
6028 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6029 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6030 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6031 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6032
6033 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6034 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6035 the *scratch* buffer.
6036
6037 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6038 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6039 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6040 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6041
6042 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6043 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6044 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6045
6046 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6047 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6048 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
6049 and compose-mail-other-frame.
6050
6051 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
6052 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
6053 full name of the specified user will be returned.
6054
6055 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
6056 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6057 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6058 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6059 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6060 files at all.
6061
6062 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6063 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6064 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6065 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6066
6067 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6068 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6069 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6070 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6071
6072 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6073
6074 ** imenu.el changes.
6075
6076 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
6077 item from menu created by imenu.
6078
6079 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6080 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6081 select one of those items.
6082 \f
6083 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6084 \f
6085 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6086
6087 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6088 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6089
6090 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6091 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6092 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6093 \f
6094 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6095
6096 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6097 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6098
6099 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6100 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6101 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6102 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6103 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6104 all caps.
6105
6106 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6107 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6108
6109 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6110 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6111 as in previous Emacs versions.
6112
6113 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6114 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6115 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6116 frames.
6117
6118 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6119 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6120 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6121 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6122 accident.
6123
6124 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6125 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6126 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6127 line and then executing the macro.
6128
6129 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6130
6131 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6132 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6133 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6134 characters.
6135
6136 ** Font Lock mode
6137
6138 *** Font Lock support modes
6139
6140 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6141 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6142 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6143 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6144 Font Lock mode is enabled.
6145
6146 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6147
6148 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6149
6150 in your ~/.emacs.
6151
6152 *** lazy-lock
6153
6154 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6155 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6156 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6157 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6158 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6159 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6160 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6161
6162 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6163
6164 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6165
6166 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6167
6168 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6169
6170 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6171 paren and key.
6172
6173 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6174 supported.
6175
6176 ** Gnus changes.
6177
6178 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6179 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6180 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6181 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6182
6183 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6184 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6185
6186 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
6187 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6188 obsolete.
6189
6190 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6191 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6192
6193 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6194
6195 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6196
6197 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6198
6199 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
6200 referred.
6201
6202 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6203
6204 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6205
6206 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
6207
6208 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
6209
6210 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
6211 buffers.
6212
6213 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
6214
6215 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
6216
6217 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
6218
6219 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
6220
6221 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
6222
6223 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
6224
6225 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
6226
6227 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
6228 is possible.
6229
6230 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
6231
6232 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
6233 groups of groups.
6234
6235 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
6236
6237 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
6238 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
6239
6240 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
6241
6242 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
6243
6244 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
6245
6246 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
6247
6248 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
6249 expiration times.
6250
6251 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
6252
6253 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
6254 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
6255
6256 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
6257 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
6258 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
6259
6260 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
6261 articles with the `*' command.
6262
6263 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
6264
6265 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
6266
6267 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
6268
6269 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
6270
6271 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
6272 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
6273
6274 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
6275 buffer.
6276
6277 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
6278
6279 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
6280
6281 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
6282
6283 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
6284
6285 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
6286
6287 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
6288
6289 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
6290
6291 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
6292
6293 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
6294
6295 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
6296 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
6297
6298 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
6299 refetching.
6300
6301 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
6302
6303 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
6304 buffer to allow easier treatment.
6305
6306 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
6307
6308 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
6309
6310 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
6311
6312 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
6313 articles.
6314
6315 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
6316
6317 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
6318
6319 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
6320 cited text to hide is now customizable.
6321
6322 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
6323
6324 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
6325
6326 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
6327
6328 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
6329
6330 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
6331
6332 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
6333 in greater detail.
6334 \f
6335 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
6336
6337 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
6338 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
6339 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
6340 exists.
6341
6342 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
6343 as well as lists.
6344
6345 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
6346 of a given keymap.
6347
6348 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
6349 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
6350 keymap or nil.
6351
6352 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
6353 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
6354 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
6355 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
6356 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
6357 alias.
6358 \f
6359 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
6360
6361 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
6362
6363 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
6364 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
6365 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
6366 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
6367 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
6368
6369 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
6370 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
6371 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
6372
6373 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
6374
6375 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
6376 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
6377 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
6378 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
6379 chapter of the manual for details.
6380
6381 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
6382 customization variables take effect.
6383
6384 ** Marking with the mouse.
6385
6386 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
6387 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
6388 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
6389
6390 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
6391
6392 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
6393
6394 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
6395 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
6396
6397 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
6398 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
6399 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
6400 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
6401 applications, these problems are significant.
6402
6403 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
6404 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
6405 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
6406 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
6407 other DOS application as a subprocess.
6408
6409 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
6410 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
6411
6412 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
6413 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
6414 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
6415 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
6416 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
6417 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
6418
6419 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
6420
6421 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
6422 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
6423 minibuffer contains.
6424
6425 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
6426
6427 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
6428 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
6429 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
6430 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
6431
6432 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
6433 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
6434 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
6435 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
6436
6437 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
6438 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
6439
6440 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
6441 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
6442 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
6443
6444 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
6445 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
6446 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
6447 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
6448
6449 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
6450
6451 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
6452 to replace the characters it "deletes".
6453
6454 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
6455
6456 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
6457 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
6458 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
6459 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
6460 immediately after the selected one.
6461
6462 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
6463 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
6464
6465 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
6466
6467 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
6468 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
6469 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
6470 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
6471 recover-session.
6472
6473 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
6474 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
6475 will not work.
6476
6477 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
6478 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
6479 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
6480 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
6481 now that the bug is fixed.
6482
6483 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
6484
6485 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
6486 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
6487 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
6488 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
6489
6490 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
6491 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
6492 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
6493 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
6494
6495 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
6496 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
6497 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
6498
6499 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
6500 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
6501 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
6502 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
6503 remain normal.
6504
6505 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
6506 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
6507
6508 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
6509 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
6510 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
6511 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
6512
6513 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
6514 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
6515 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
6516 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
6517 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
6518 `mail-directory-stream'.)
6519
6520 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
6521 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
6522 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
6523 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
6524
6525 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
6526 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
6527 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
6528
6529 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
6530 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
6531 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
6532 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
6533 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
6534 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
6535 to a limitation in font-lock).
6536
6537 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
6538
6539 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
6540 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
6541 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
6542 this example:
6543
6544 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
6545 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
6546
6547 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6548
6549 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
6550
6551 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
6552
6553 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
6554
6555 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
6556 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
6557 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
6558 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
6559 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
6560 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
6561
6562 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
6563 does the same job.
6564
6565 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
6566 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
6567
6568 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
6569 text.
6570
6571 ** Font Lock mode
6572
6573 *** Global Font Lock mode
6574
6575 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
6576 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
6577 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
6578 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
6579 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
6580
6581 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
6582
6583 (global-font-lock-mode t)
6584
6585 in your ~/.emacs.
6586
6587 *** Local Refontification
6588
6589 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
6590 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
6591 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
6592 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
6593
6594 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
6595 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
6596 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
6597 above and below point.
6598
6599 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
6600
6601 ** Follow mode
6602
6603 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
6604 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
6605 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
6606 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
6607 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
6608 follow-mode.
6609
6610 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
6611
6612 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
6613 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
6614
6615 ** hide-show changes.
6616
6617 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
6618 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
6619 normal hooks.
6620
6621 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
6622 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
6623
6624 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
6625 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
6626 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
6627
6628 ** MSDOS Changes
6629
6630 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
6631 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
6632
6633 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
6634 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
6635
6636 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
6637
6638 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
6639 pressing both mouse buttons.
6640
6641 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
6642 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
6643 are:
6644
6645 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
6646 now works.
6647
6648 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
6649
6650 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
6651 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
6652
6653 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
6654
6655 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
6656
6657 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
6658
6659 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
6660
6661 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
6662 \f
6663 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
6664
6665 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
6666 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
6667 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
6668 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
6669 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
6670
6671 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
6672
6673 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
6674 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
6675 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
6676 be different.
6677
6678 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
6679 than `system-type'.
6680
6681 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
6682
6683 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
6684 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
6685
6686 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
6687 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
6688
6689 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
6690 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
6691 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
6692
6693 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
6694 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
6695 like this:
6696
6697 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6698
6699 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
6700 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
6701 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
6702
6703 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
6704 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
6705 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
6706
6707 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
6708 up if too much time passes.
6709
6710 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
6711
6712 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
6713 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
6714 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
6715 form in BODY.
6716
6717 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
6718 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
6719 call looks like this:
6720
6721 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6722
6723 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
6724 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
6725 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
6726 ARGS.
6727
6728 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
6729 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
6730 command.
6731
6732 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
6733 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
6734 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
6735 each time Emacs becomes idle.
6736
6737 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
6738 idle for SECS seconds.
6739
6740 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
6741 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
6742 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
6743 instead.
6744
6745 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
6746 there is no answer within a certain time.
6747
6748 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
6749
6750 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
6751 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
6752 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
6753
6754 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
6755 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
6756 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
6757 arguments in between are ignored.
6758
6759 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
6760 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
6761
6762 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
6763 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
6764 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
6765 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
6766 version.
6767
6768 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
6769 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
6770 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
6771 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
6772 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
6773 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
6774
6775 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
6776 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
6777 systems with limited file name syntax.
6778
6779 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
6780 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
6781 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
6782 completions.el:
6783
6784 (defvar save-completions-file-name
6785 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
6786 "*The filename to save completions to.")
6787
6788 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
6789 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
6790 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
6791 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
6792 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
6793
6794 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
6795 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
6796 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
6797
6798 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
6799 marker from its buffer position.
6800
6801 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
6802 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
6803 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
6804
6805 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
6806 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
6807 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
6808 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
6809 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
6810 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
6811
6812 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
6813 errors that happen often during editing.
6814
6815 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
6816 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
6817 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
6818
6819 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
6820 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
6821
6822 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
6823 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
6824 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
6825 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
6826 and not get-buffer-window.
6827
6828 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
6829 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
6830 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
6831
6832 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
6833 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
6834 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
6835 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
6836 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
6837 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
6838 over and over for the same text.
6839
6840 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
6841
6842 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
6843 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
6844
6845 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
6846 ;; $HEADER: text $
6847
6848 in addition to the normal
6849
6850 ;; HEADER: text
6851
6852 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
6853 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
6854 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
6855 \f
6856 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
6857
6858 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
6859 Copyright information:
6860
6861 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6862
6863 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
6864 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
6865 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
6866 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
6867
6868 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
6869 of this document, or of portions of it,
6870 under the above conditions, provided also that they
6871 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
6872 \f
6873 Local variables:
6874 mode: outline
6875 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
6876 end: