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1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
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 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
12
13 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
14
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
17
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
20 to list them.
21
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
24
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
27
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
30
31 \f
32 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
33
34 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
35 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
36
37 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
38 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
39 Postscript files are included.
40
41 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
42 `dired-ref.tex'.
43
44 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
45 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
46
47 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
48 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
49 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
50 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
51 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
52 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
53
54 +++
55 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
56 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
57 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
58 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
59
60 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
61 a version-dependent component.
62
63 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
64 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
65 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
66 character is still bound as before.
67
68 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
69 using that menu.
70
71 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
72 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
73
74 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
75 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
76 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
77 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
78 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
79 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
80 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
81
82 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
83 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
84 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
85 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
86 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
87 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
88 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
89 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
90 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
91
92 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
93 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
94
95 +++
96 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
97 point in a pop-up window.
98
99 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
100 displays all characters in that character set.
101
102 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
103 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
104
105 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
106 on the context.
107
108 +++
109 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
110
111 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
112 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
113
114 +++
115 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
116 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
117 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
118 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
119
120 +++
121 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
122 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
123 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
124 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
125
126 +++
127 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
128 on the display using several methods
129
130 +++
131 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
132 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
133 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
134
135 +++
136 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
137 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
138
139 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
140
141 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
142 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
143
144 +++
145 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
146 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
147 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
148 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
149
150 +++
151 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
152 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
153 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
154
155 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
156 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
157
158 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
159 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
160 this behavior.
161
162 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
163 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
164 Emacs dump core.
165
166 +++
167 ** New X resources recognized
168
169 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
170 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
171 is useful for debugging X problems.
172
173 Example:
174
175 emacs.synchronous: true
176
177 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
178 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
179 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
180 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
181 visual class names are
182
183 TrueColor
184 PseudoColor
185 DirectColor
186 StaticColor
187 GrayScale
188 StaticGray
189
190 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
191 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
192 meaning.
193
194 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
195 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
196 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
197 visual.
198
199 Example:
200
201 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
202
203 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
204 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
205 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
206 resource values are `true' or `on'.
207
208 Example:
209
210 emacs.privateColormap: true
211
212 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
213 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
214 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
215
216 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
217 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
218 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
219 be customized.
220
221 +++
222 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
223
224 +++
225 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
226 all frames except the selected one.
227
228 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
229 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
230
231 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
232 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
233 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
234 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
235
236 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
237 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
238
239 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
240 read mail from the menu etc.
241
242 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
243 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
244
245 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
246
247 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
248 macros
249
250 Key binding Macro
251 -------------------------
252 C-c C-c C-s @strong
253 C-c C-c C-e @emph
254 C-c C-c u @url
255 C-c C-c q @quotation
256 C-c C-c m @email
257
258 ** Changes in Outline mode.
259
260 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
261 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
262 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
263
264 ** Changes to Emacs Server
265
266 *** There new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
267 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
268 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
269 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
270 buffers to kill, as before.
271
272 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
273 i.e. buffers visited which `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
274 this way.
275
276 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
277
278 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
279 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
280 use. Default is 1000.
281
282 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
283 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
284
285 +++
286 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
287 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
288 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
289 buffers.
290
291 +++
292 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
293 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
294 .emacs file.
295
296 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
297 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
298
299 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
300 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
301 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
302
303 ** Faces and frame parameters.
304
305 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
306 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
307 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
308 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
309 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
310 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
311 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
312
313 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
314 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
315 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
316 `default' face and vice versa.
317
318 ** New face `menu'.
319
320 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
321 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
322 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
323
324 +++
325 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
326
327 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
328 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
329 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
330 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
331
332 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
333 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
334 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
335
336 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
337 `ScreenGamma'.
338
339 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
340
341 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
342 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
343 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
344 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
345 the text.
346
347 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
348
349 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
350 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
351 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
352 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
353 specify a font.
354
355 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
356 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
357 under Lisp changes, below.
358
359 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
360
361 +++
362 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
363 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
364 otherwise, it is hollow.
365
366 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
367 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
368 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
369 customizing face `fringe'.
370
371 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
372 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
373
374 ** LessTif support.
375
376 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
377 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
378
379 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
380
381 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
382 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
383 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
384 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
385 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
386 Emacs.
387
388 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
389 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
390 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
391 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
392 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
393 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
394
395 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
396 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
397 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
398 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
399 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
400 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
401
402 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
403 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
404 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
405 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
406 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
407
408 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
409
410 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
411 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
412 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
413
414 +++
415 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
416
417 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
418 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
419 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
420 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
421 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
422 whitespace.
423
424 ** Busy-cursor.
425
426 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
427 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
428
429 +++
430 ** Blinking cursor
431
432 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
433 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
434 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
435 the group `cursor'.
436
437 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
438
439 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
440 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
441 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
442 details.
443
444 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
445 have to do anything to activate it.
446
447 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
448
449 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
450 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
451 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
452 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
453
454 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
455
456 +++
457 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
458
459 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
460
461 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
462 LessTif/Motif one.
463
464 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
465 LessTif and Motif.
466
467 ** Hscrolling in C code.
468
469 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
470 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
471 customized.
472
473 ** Tool bar support.
474
475 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
476 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
477
478 +++
479 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
480
481 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
482 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
483 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
484 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
485 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
486
487 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
488
489 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
490 buffers.
491
492 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
493 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
494
495 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
496
497 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
498 `*') toggles the status.
499
500 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
501
502 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
503
504 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
505 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
506 non-nil.
507
508 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
509
510 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
511 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
512 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
513 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
514 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
515 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
516 on terminals.
517
518 ** Sound support
519
520 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
521 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
522 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
523
524 +++
525 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
526 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
527 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
528 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
529 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
530 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
531
532 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
533
534 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
535
536 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
537 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
538 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
539
540 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
541 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
542
543 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
544 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
545 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
546
547 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
548
549 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
550 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
551 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
552 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
553
554 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
555 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
556 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
557 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
558
559 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
560 notably at the end of lines.
561
562 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
563 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
564
565 +++
566 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
567
568 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
569 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
570 after each match to get the replacement text.
571
572 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
573 you edit the replacement string.
574
575 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
576 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
577 lisp-complete-symbol.
578
579 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
580
581 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
582 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
583 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
584 window size by setting the following variable:
585
586 - User option: max-mini-window-height
587
588 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
589 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
590 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
591
592 Default is 0.25.
593
594 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
595
596 ** Changes to hideshow.el
597
598 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
599 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
600
601 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
602
603 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
604 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
605 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
606 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
607 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
608 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
609
610 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
611 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
612 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
613 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
614
615 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
616
617 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
618 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
619 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
620 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
621 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
622
623 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
624 something like this in your .emacs.
625
626 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
627 (lambda ()
628 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
629
630 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
631
632 +++
633 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
634 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
635 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
636
637 +++
638 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
639 buffer.
640
641 +++
642 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
643 a log file.
644
645 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
646 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
647
648 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
649 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
650 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
651 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
652
653 ** Changes in Font Lock
654
655 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
656 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
657 mode.
658
659 ** Comint (subshell) changes
660
661 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
662 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
663 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
664 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
665 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
666 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
667 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
668 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
669
670 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
671 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
672
673 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
674 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
675 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
676
677 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
678 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
679 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
680
681 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
682 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
683 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
684 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
685
686 ** Changes to Rmail mode
687
688 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
689 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
690 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
691 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
692 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
693 as correspondent.
694
695 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
696 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
697 regexp matching your mail addresses.
698
699 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
700 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
701 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
702 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
703 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
704
705 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
706 like `j'.
707
708 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
709 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
710 digest message.
711
712 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
713 in which folder to put messages automatically.
714
715 ** Changes to TeX mode
716
717 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
718 `latex-mode'.
719
720 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
721
722 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
723 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
724 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
725 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
726 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
727 can be edited from that buffer.
728
729 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
730 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
731 `A' to use all marked entries).
732
733 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
734 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
735
736 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
737 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
738 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
739 been cited.
740
741 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
742 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
743 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
744 in column 1 are always made leaves.
745
746 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
747 has the following new features:
748
749 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
750 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
751 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
752 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
753
754 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
755 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
756 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
757 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
758 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
759 defaults to 1.
760
761 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
762 file names.
763
764 +++
765 ** Tooltips.
766
767 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
768 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
769 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
770
771 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
772 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
773 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
774 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
775
776 +++
777 ** Customize changes
778
779 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
780 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
781 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
782
783 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
784 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
785 default).
786
787 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
788 between custom options. Example:
789
790 (defcustom default-input-method nil
791 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
792 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
793 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
794 :group 'mule
795 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
796 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
797
798 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
799 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
800 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
801
802 ** New features in evaluation commands
803
804 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
805 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
806 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
807 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
808 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
809
810 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
811 code when called with a prefix argument.
812
813 ** Ispell changes
814
815 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
816 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
817 spell-checks the current buffer.
818
819 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
820 added.
821
822 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
823 correction is made and re-checked.
824
825 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
826
827 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
828 cases.
829
830 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
831 on syntax errors.
832
833 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
834 end of the buffer.
835
836 ** Dired changes
837
838 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
839 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
840 is, delete only empty directories.
841
842 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
843 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
844 copy directories recursively.
845
846 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
847 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
848 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
849
850 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
851 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
852 directory.
853
854 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
855 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
856 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
857 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
858 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
859
860 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
861 from ls switches.
862
863 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
864 use the -f option when sending mail.
865
866 ** CC mode changes.
867
868 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
869 current user setups (although it's believed that these
870 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
871 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
872 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
873 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
874 release.
875
876 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
877 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
878 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
879 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
880 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
881 have to bother.
882
883 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
884 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
885 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
886 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
887 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
888 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
889
890 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
891 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
892 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
893 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
894 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
895 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
896 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
897 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
898
899 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
900 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
901 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
902 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
903 above.
904
905 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
906 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
907 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
908 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
909 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
910 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
911 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
912 function documentation for more info.
913
914 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
915 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
916 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
917 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
918 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
919 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
920 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
921 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
922
923 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
924
925 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
926 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
927
928 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
929 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
930 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
931 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
932 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
933 style system.
934
935 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
936 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
937 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
938 as far as possible.
939
940 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
941 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
942 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
943 chapter about this in the manual.
944
945 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
946 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
947 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
948 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
949 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
950
951 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
952 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
953 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
954
955 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
956 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
957
958 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
959 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
960 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
961 inside CC Mode.
962
963 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
964 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
965 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
966 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
967 cc-mode/).
968
969 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
970 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
971 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
972 literals.
973
974 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
975 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
976 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
977 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
978 this function.
979
980 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
981 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
982 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
983 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
984 Thanks to Eric Eide.
985
986 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
987 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
988 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
989
990 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
991
992 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
993 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
994 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
995 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
996
997 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
998 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
999 the column specified by comment-column.
1000
1001 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1002 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1003 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1004 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1005 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1006 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1007
1008 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1009 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1010 arguments.
1011
1012 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1013
1014 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1015 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1016 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1017 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1018 Provan).
1019
1020 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1021
1022 ** Makefile mode changes
1023
1024 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1025
1026 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1027 Fontlock mode is active.
1028
1029 ** Isearch changes
1030
1031 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1032 so that searches can be resumed.
1033
1034 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1035 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1036 that started the search.
1037
1038 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1039 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1040
1041 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1042
1043 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1044 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1045 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1046 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1047 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1048 `secondary-selection'.
1049
1050 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1051 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1052 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1053 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1054 usual snappy response.
1055
1056 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1057 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1058 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1059 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1060
1061 ** Changes in sort.el
1062
1063 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1064 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1065 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1066 numeric base.
1067
1068 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1069
1070 +++
1071 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1072 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1073 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1074
1075 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1076 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1077
1078 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1079 output ^M at the end of lines.
1080
1081 ** Shell script mode changes.
1082
1083 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1084 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1085 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1086
1087 ** Etags changes.
1088
1089 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1090
1091 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1092 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1093 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1094 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1095 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1096
1097 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1098 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1099
1100 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1101 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1102
1103 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1104 types.
1105
1106 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1107
1108 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1109
1110 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1111 are now tagged.
1112
1113 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1114 variables are tagged.
1115
1116 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1117
1118 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1119 for PSWrap.
1120
1121 ** Changes in etags.el
1122
1123 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1124 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1125 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1126
1127 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1128 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1129
1130 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1131 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1132 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1133 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1134
1135 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1136
1137 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1138 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1139
1140 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1141
1142 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1143 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1144 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1145
1146 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1147 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1148
1149 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1150 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1151
1152 +++
1153 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1154 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1155 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1156
1157 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1158 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1159 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1160 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1161
1162 +++
1163 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1164 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1165 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1166
1167 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1168
1169 +++
1170 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1171
1172 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1173 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1174 expression from that list, are not checked.
1175
1176 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1177 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1178 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1179 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1180
1181 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1182
1183 ** New modes and packages
1184
1185 +++
1186 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1187 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1188 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1189 on certain projects.
1190
1191 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1192 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1193
1194 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1195
1196 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1197 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1198 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1199 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1200 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1201 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1202 corresponding file is read.
1203
1204 +++
1205 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1206 Emacs is idle.
1207
1208 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1209 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1210
1211 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1212 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1213 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1214
1215 +++
1216 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1217 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1218 separate Texinfo file.
1219
1220 +++
1221 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1222 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1223 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1224 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1225 enter checkin log messages.
1226
1227 +++
1228 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1229 without invoking external programs.
1230
1231 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1232 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1233 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1234 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1235 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1236
1237 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1238 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1239
1240 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1241 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1242
1243 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1244 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1245 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1246 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1247 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1248 single step.
1249
1250 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1251 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1252 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1253 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1254
1255 +++
1256 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1257 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1258 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1259
1260 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1261 PostScript.
1262
1263 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1264
1265 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1266
1267 ; comment (until end of line)
1268 A non-terminal
1269 "C" terminal
1270 ?C? special
1271 $A default non-terminal
1272 $"C" default terminal
1273 $?C? default special
1274 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1275 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1276 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1277 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1278 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1279 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1280 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1281 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1282 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1283 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1284 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1285 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1286 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1287 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1288 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1289
1290 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1291
1292 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1293 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1294 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1295 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1296 equal signs of assignments.
1297
1298 +++
1299 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1300 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1301
1302 +++
1303 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1304 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1305 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1306 customize the package.
1307
1308 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1309
1310 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1311 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1312 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1313 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1314 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1315 which answers different needs.
1316
1317 +++
1318 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1319 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1320 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1321 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1322 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1323 to be enabled.
1324
1325 +++
1326 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1327 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1328
1329 +++
1330 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1331
1332 +++
1333 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1334
1335 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1336
1337 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1338 Pascal) language.
1339
1340 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1341 the text at point.
1342
1343 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1344
1345 +++
1346 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1347
1348 *** whitespace.el ???
1349
1350 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1351 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1352 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1353 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1354 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1355 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1356 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1357
1358 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1359
1360 Here is an example of columns:
1361
1362 horse apple bus
1363 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1364 porcupine strawberry airplane
1365
1366 Doing the following settings:
1367
1368 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1369 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1370 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1371 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1372
1373
1374 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1375
1376 M-x delimit-columns-region
1377
1378 It results:
1379
1380 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1381 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1382 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1383
1384 delim-col has the following options:
1385
1386 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1387 before all columns.
1388
1389 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1390 between each column.
1391
1392 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1393 after all columns.
1394
1395 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1396 each column.
1397
1398 delim-col has the following commands:
1399
1400 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1401 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1402
1403 +++
1404 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1405 were operated on recently.
1406
1407 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1408
1409 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1410 recentf at Emacs startup.
1411
1412 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1413 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1414 file list can be displayed:
1415
1416 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1417 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1418 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1419
1420 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1421 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1422
1423 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1424 text.
1425
1426 +++
1427 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1428 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1429 specific to Message mode.
1430
1431 +++
1432 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1433 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1434 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1435
1436 +++
1437 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1438 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1439 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1440
1441 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1442 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1443
1444 +++
1445 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1446
1447 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1448 minibuffer with completion.
1449
1450 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1451 with the diary features.
1452
1453 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1454 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1455
1456 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1457 Fill mode.
1458
1459 ** Withdrawn packages
1460
1461 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1462 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1463
1464 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1465
1466 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1467
1468 \f
1469 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1470 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1471
1472 +++
1473 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1474 is running in batch mode. For example,
1475
1476 (message "%s" (read t))
1477
1478 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1479 to standard output.
1480
1481 +++
1482 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1483 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1484
1485 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1486 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1487 frame or window.
1488
1489 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1490 were added
1491
1492 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1493
1494 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1495 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1496
1497 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1498
1499 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1500 comparison is done with `eq'.
1501
1502 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1503
1504 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1505 has been changed.
1506
1507 +++
1508 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1509 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1510 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1511
1512 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1513 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1514
1515 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1516 function was declared obsolete.
1517
1518 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1519 retained as an alias).
1520
1521 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1522 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1523 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1524
1525 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1526
1527 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1528
1529 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1530 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1531
1532 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1533
1534 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1535
1536 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1537
1538 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1539 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1540 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1541 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1542 returned.
1543
1544 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1545 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1546 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1547 minibuffer even if it is active.
1548
1549 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1550 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1551 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1552 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1553 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1554 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1555
1556 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1557 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1558 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1559 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1560 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1561 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1562 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1563
1564 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1565 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1566 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1567
1568 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1569 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1570 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1571 Default value is nil.
1572
1573 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1574 meaning no limit.
1575
1576 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1577 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1578 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1579
1580 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1581 of a primitive.
1582
1583 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1584 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1585 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1586 than replacing the local map.
1587
1588 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1589 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1590
1591 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1592
1593 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1594 promised long ago.
1595
1596 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1597 \f
1598 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1599
1600 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1601 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1602 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1603 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1604
1605 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1606 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1607 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1608 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1609
1610 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1611 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1612 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1613 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1614
1615 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1616 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1617 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1618
1619 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1620 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1621 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1622 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1623 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1624 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1625 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1626 eight-bit-graphic.
1627
1628 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1629
1630 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1631 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1632 character set as previously.
1633
1634 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1635 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1636 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1637
1638 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1639 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1640 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1641 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1642
1643 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1644 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1645
1646 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1647 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1648 "fontset-default".
1649
1650 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1651 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1652
1653 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1654 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1655 buffers and strings.
1656
1657 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1658 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1659 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1660 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1661 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1662 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1663 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1664 also been deleted.
1665
1666 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1667 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1668 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1669
1670 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1671 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1672 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1673 may differ between buffer and string text.
1674
1675 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1676 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1677
1678 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1679 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1680 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1681 `composition' from STRING.
1682
1683 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1684 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1685
1686 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1687 obsolete.
1688
1689 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1690 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1691 character set is not used.
1692
1693 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1694 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1695 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1696
1697 +++
1698 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1699 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1700 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1701
1702 +++
1703 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1704 that offset in the file before writing.
1705
1706 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1707 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1708
1709 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1710 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1711 from which the command was issued.
1712
1713 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1714 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1715 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1716 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1717 operate on.
1718
1719 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1720 to `window-buffer-height'.
1721
1722 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1723
1724 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1725 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1726 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1727
1728 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1729 respectively.
1730
1731 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1732 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1733
1734 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1735 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1736 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1737
1738 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1739 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1740 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1741 is currently displayed in some window.
1742
1743 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1744 argument function's results.
1745
1746 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1747 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1748
1749 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1750 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1751
1752 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1753 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1754
1755 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1756 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1757 as follows:
1758
1759 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1760 nil don't display a cursor
1761 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1762 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1763 others display a box cursor.
1764
1765 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1766 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1767 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1768 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1769
1770 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1771 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1772 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1773 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1774
1775 Example:
1776
1777 (string-to-syntax "()")
1778 => (4 . 41)
1779
1780 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1781 other than 10.
1782
1783 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1784 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1785
1786 #b1111
1787 => 15
1788 #b-1111
1789 => -15
1790
1791 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1792
1793 #o666
1794 => 438
1795
1796 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1797
1798 #xbeef
1799 => 48815
1800
1801 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1802
1803 #2R-111
1804 => -7
1805 #25rah
1806 => 267
1807
1808 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1809 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1810 and isn't a string.
1811
1812 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1813 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1814 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1815 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1816
1817 +++
1818 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1819
1820 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1821 for a regexp in a string.
1822
1823 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1824 `mouse-position-function'.
1825
1826 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1827 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1828
1829 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1830 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1831
1832 +++
1833 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1834 returns it.
1835
1836 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1837 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1838
1839 +++
1840 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1841 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1842 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1843 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1844 mode.
1845
1846 +++
1847 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1848 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1849
1850 +++
1851 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1852 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1853 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1854 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1855 been performed."
1856
1857 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1858 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1859 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1860 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1861
1862 +++
1863 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1864 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1865 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1866
1867 +++
1868 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1869 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1870 specified table.
1871
1872 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1873
1874 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1875 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1876 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1877 what BODY returns.
1878
1879 +++
1880 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1881 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1882
1883 +++
1884 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1885 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1886
1887 +++
1888 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1889 instead of being optional.
1890
1891 +++
1892 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1893 modify read-only text.
1894
1895 +++
1896 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1897
1898 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1899 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1900 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1901 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1902 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1903
1904 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1905 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1906 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1907 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1908 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1909 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1910 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1911
1912 +++
1913 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1914 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1915 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1916 start sequences.
1917
1918 +++
1919 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1920 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1921
1922 +++
1923 ** New function `propertize'
1924
1925 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1926 strings with text properties.
1927
1928 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1929
1930 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1931 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1932 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1933 specified value of that property. Example:
1934
1935 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1936
1937 +++
1938 ** push and pop macros.
1939
1940 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1941 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1942 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1943
1944 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1945 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1946 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1947
1948 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1949
1950 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1951 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1952
1953 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1954 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1955 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1956 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1957
1958 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1959 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1960 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1961 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1962
1963 +++
1964 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1965 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1966
1967 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1968 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1969 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1970 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1971 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1972 space, and DEL.
1973 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1974 and DEL.
1975 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1976 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1977 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1978 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1979 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1980 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1981 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1982 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1983 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1984 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1985 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1986 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1987 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1988 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1989 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1990
1991 +++
1992 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1993
1994 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1995
1996 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1997
1998 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1999 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2000
2001 :test TEST
2002
2003 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2004 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2005 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2006
2007 :size SIZE
2008
2009 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2010 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2011
2012 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2013
2014 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2015 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2016 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2017 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2018 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2019
2020 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2021
2022 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2023 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2024 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2025
2026 :weakness WEAK
2027
2028 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2029 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2030 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2031 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2032 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2033
2034 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2035
2036 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2037
2038 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2039
2040 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2041
2042 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2043
2044 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2045 values are shared.
2046
2047 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2048
2049 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2050
2051 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2052
2053 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2054
2055 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2056
2057 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2058
2059 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2060
2061 Returns the size of TABLE.
2062
2063 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2064
2065 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2066
2067 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2068
2069 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2070
2071 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2072
2073 Clear TABLE.
2074
2075 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2076
2077 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2078 not found.
2079
2080 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2081
2082 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2083 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2084
2085 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2086
2087 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2088
2089 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2090
2091 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2092 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2093
2094 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2095
2096 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2097
2098 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2099
2100 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2101 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2102 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2103 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2104 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2105
2106 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2107
2108 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2109 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2110 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2111
2112 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2113 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2114
2115 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2116 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2117
2118 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2119 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2120
2121 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2122 'case-fold-string-hash))
2123
2124 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2125
2126 +++
2127 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2128
2129 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2130 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2131 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2132
2133 +++
2134 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2135
2136 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2137 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2138
2139 +++
2140 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2141 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2142 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2143 is too short to reach that column.
2144
2145 +++
2146 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2147 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2148 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2149 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2150
2151 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2152 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2153 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2154
2155 +++
2156 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2157 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2158
2159 +++
2160 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2161 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2162
2163 +++
2164 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2165 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2166 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2167 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2168 temporary-file-directory instead.
2169
2170 +++
2171 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2172 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2173 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2174 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2175
2176 +++
2177 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2178 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2179
2180 +++
2181 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2182
2183 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2184 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2185 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2186
2187 +++
2188 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2189
2190 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2191 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2192 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2193 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2194 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2195 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2196
2197 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2198 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2199 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2200 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2201
2202 +++
2203 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2204
2205 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2206 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2207 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2208 result string.
2209
2210 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2211 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2212
2213 Example:
2214
2215 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2216 (s2 "world"))
2217 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2218 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2219 (format s1 s2))
2220
2221 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2222
2223 +++
2224 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2225
2226 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2227 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2228 argument in it.
2229
2230 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2231 (arg "world"))
2232 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2233 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2234 (message msg arg))
2235
2236 +++
2237 ** Sound support
2238
2239 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2240 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2241
2242 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2243 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2244 to enable sound support.
2245
2246 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2247 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2248 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2249 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2250 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2251
2252 The following sound properties are supported:
2253
2254 - `:file FILE'
2255
2256 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2257 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2258
2259 - `:data DATA'
2260
2261 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2262 may be present, but not both.
2263
2264 - `:volume VOLUME'
2265
2266 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2267 0..1. This property is optional.
2268
2269 Other properties are ignored.
2270
2271 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2272
2273 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2274 a keyword symbol.
2275
2276 ** Changes to garbage collection
2277
2278 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2279 of live and free strings.
2280
2281 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2282 strings that have been consed so far.
2283
2284 \f
2285 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2286 Lisp Manual
2287
2288 +++
2289 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2290
2291 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2292 image.
2293
2294 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2295
2296 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2297
2298 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2299 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2300 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2301 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2302 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2303
2304 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2305 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2306
2307 +++
2308 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2309 optional.
2310
2311 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2312
2313 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2314 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2315 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2316 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2317
2318 \f
2319 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2320
2321 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2322 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2323 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2324 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2325
2326 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2327 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2328
2329 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2330 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2331 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2332 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2333 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2334 just display it black instead.
2335
2336 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2337 a line like
2338
2339 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2340
2341 in your `.emacs'.
2342
2343 ** New face implementation.
2344
2345 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2346 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2347
2348 +++
2349 *** New faces.
2350
2351 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2352
2353 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2354
2355 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2356 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2357
2358 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2359
2360 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2361
2362 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2363
2364 6. Foreground color.
2365
2366 7. Background color.
2367
2368 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2369
2370 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2371
2372 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2373
2374 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2375
2376 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2377 color.
2378
2379 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2380 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2381
2382 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2383 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2384 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2385 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2386 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2387 attributes mentioned above.
2388
2389 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2390 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2391 created frames.
2392
2393 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2394 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2395 `fully-specified'.
2396
2397 +++
2398 *** Face merging.
2399
2400 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2401 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2402 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2403 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2404 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2405 results in a fully-specified face.
2406
2407 +++
2408 *** Face realization.
2409
2410 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2411 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2412 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2413 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2414 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2415 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2416
2417 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2418 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2419 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2420 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2421
2422 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2423 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2424 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2425 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2426 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2427
2428 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2429 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2430 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2431 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2432 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2433 Emacs.
2434
2435 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2436 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2437 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2438 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2439
2440 ++++
2441 **** Clearing face caches.
2442
2443 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2444 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2445 unused fonts.
2446
2447 +++
2448 *** Font selection.
2449
2450 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2451 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2452 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2453
2454 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2455 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2456 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2457 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2458 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2459
2460 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2461 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2462 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2463
2464 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2465
2466 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2467 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2468 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2469 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2470 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2471 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2472 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2473
2474 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2475 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2476 face doesn't exist.
2477
2478 +++
2479 **** Scalable fonts
2480
2481 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2482 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2483 servers.
2484
2485 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2486 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2487 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2488 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2489 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2490 that list. Example:
2491
2492 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2493
2494 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2495
2496 +++
2497 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2498
2499 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2500
2501 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2502 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2503 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2504
2505 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2506 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2507 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2508 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2509 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2510 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2511 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2512 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2513 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2514 of the face font sort order.
2515
2516 - Function: x-font-family-list
2517
2518 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2519 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2520 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2521 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2522
2523 - Variable: font-list-limit
2524
2525 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2526 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2527 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2528
2529 +++
2530 *** Setting face attributes.
2531
2532 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2533 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2534 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2535 `face-attribute'.
2536
2537 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2538 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2539
2540 The following attributes are recognized:
2541
2542 `:family'
2543
2544 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2545 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2546 and `?' are allowed.
2547
2548 `:width'
2549
2550 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2551 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2552 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2553 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2554
2555 `:height'
2556
2557 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2558 1/10 pt.
2559
2560 `:weight'
2561
2562 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2563 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2564 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2565
2566 `:slant'
2567
2568 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2569 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2570 `reverse-oblique'.
2571
2572 `:foreground', `:background'
2573
2574 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2575
2576 `:underline'
2577
2578 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2579 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2580 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2581 don't underline.
2582
2583 `:overline'
2584
2585 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2586 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2587 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2588 overline.
2589
2590 `:strike-through'
2591
2592 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2593 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2594 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2595 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2596
2597 `:box'
2598
2599 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2600 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2601 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2602 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2603 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2604 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2605 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2606 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2607 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2608 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2609 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2610 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2611 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2612 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2613 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2614 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2615 box.
2616
2617 `:inverse-video'
2618
2619 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2620 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2621
2622 `:stipple'
2623
2624 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2625 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2626 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2627 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2628 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2629 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2630
2631 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2632 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2633
2634 `:font'
2635
2636 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2637 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2638 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2639 versions of Emacs.
2640
2641 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2642 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2643 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2644
2645 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2646 `defface'.
2647
2648 *** Face attributes and X resources
2649
2650 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2651 from X resources:
2652
2653 Face attribute X resource class
2654 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2655 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2656 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2657 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2658 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2659 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2660 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2661 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2662 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2663 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2664 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2665 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2666 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2667 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2668 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2669 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2670 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2671 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2672 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2673 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2674
2675 +++
2676 *** Text property `face'.
2677
2678 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2679 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2680 specification can be
2681
2682 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2683
2684 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2685 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2686 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2687 for face attribute names.
2688
2689 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2690 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2691 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2692
2693 +++
2694 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2695
2696 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2697 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2698 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2699 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2700 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2701 used to clear the mapping table.
2702
2703 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2704
2705 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2706 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2707 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2708 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2709 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2710 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2711 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2712 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2713 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2714 modify their color-related behavior.
2715
2716 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2717 any frame type.
2718
2719 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2720
2721 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2722 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2723 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2724 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2725 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2726 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2727 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2728 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2729 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2730
2731 +++
2732 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2733
2734 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2735
2736 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2737 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2738 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2739
2740 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2741
2742 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2743 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2744 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2745
2746 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2747 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2748 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2749 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2750 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2751 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2752 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2753 functions.
2754
2755 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2756 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2757 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2758
2759 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2760
2761 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2762
2763 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2764
2765 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2766 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2767 constrained position if that is is different.
2768
2769 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2770 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2771 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2772 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2773 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2774 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2775 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2776 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2777 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2778
2779 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2780 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2781 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2782 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2783 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2784
2785 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2786 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2787
2788 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2789
2790 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2791
2792 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2793 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2794 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2795
2796 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2797
2798 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2799 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2800 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2801 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2802 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2803
2804 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2805
2806 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2807 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2808 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2809 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2810 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2811
2812 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2813
2814 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2815 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2816 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2817
2818 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2819
2820 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2821 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2822 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2823
2824 +++
2825 ** Image support.
2826
2827 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2828 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2829 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2830 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2831
2832 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2833 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2834 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2835 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2836 area.
2837
2838 IMAGE is an image specification.
2839
2840 *** Image specifications
2841
2842 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2843 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2844 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2845 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2846 described below are ignored.
2847
2848 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2849
2850 `:ascent ASCENT'
2851
2852 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2853 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2854 to use for its ascent.
2855
2856 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2857 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2858
2859 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2860 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2861 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2862 overlays that apply to the image.
2863
2864 `:margin MARGIN'
2865
2866 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2867 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2868
2869 `:relief RELIEF'
2870
2871 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2872 around an image.
2873
2874 `:algorithm ALGO'
2875
2876 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2877 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2878 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2879 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2880
2881 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2882
2883 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2884 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2885 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2886 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2887 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2888 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2889 background of the image.
2890
2891 `:file FILE'
2892
2893 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2894 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2895 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2896 may be present in the image specification.
2897
2898 `:data DATA'
2899
2900 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2901 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2902 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2903 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2904
2905 *** Supported image types
2906
2907 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2908
2909 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2910 properties supported are
2911
2912 `:foreground FG'
2913
2914 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2915 is the frame's foreground.
2916
2917 `:background FG'
2918
2919 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2920 the frame's background color.
2921
2922 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2923 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2924 instead of a `:file' property.
2925
2926 `:width WIDTH'
2927
2928 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2929
2930 `:height HEIGHT'
2931
2932 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2933
2934 `:data DATA'
2935
2936 DATA must be either
2937
2938 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2939 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2940
2941 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2942
2943 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2944 bitmap.
2945
2946 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2947 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2948 in the file.
2949
2950 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2951
2952 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2953 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2954 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2955 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2956
2957 Additional image properties supported are:
2958
2959 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2960
2961 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2962 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2963 name.
2964
2965 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2966 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2967
2968 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2969 to display compressed images.
2970
2971 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2972
2973 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2974 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2975 defined.
2976
2977 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2978
2979 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2980 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2981 are:
2982
2983 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2984
2985 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2986 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2987 properties defined.
2988
2989 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2990
2991 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2992 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2993
2994 Additional image properties supported are:
2995
2996 `:index INDEX'
2997
2998 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2999 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3000
3001 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3002 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3003 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3004 every 0.1 seconds.
3005
3006 (defun show-anim (file max)
3007 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3008 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3009
3010 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3011 (when (= idx max)
3012 (setq idx 0))
3013 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3014 (save-excursion
3015 (set-buffer buffer)
3016 (goto-char (point-min))
3017 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3018 (insert-image img "x"))
3019 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3020
3021 **** PNG, image type `png'
3022
3023 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3024 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3025 properties defined.
3026
3027 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3028
3029 Additional image properties supported are:
3030
3031 `:pt-width WIDTH'
3032
3033 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3034 integer. This is a required property.
3035
3036 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
3037
3038 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3039 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3040
3041 `:bounding-box BOX'
3042
3043 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3044 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3045 files. This is an required property.
3046
3047 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3048 lisp/gs.el.
3049
3050 *** Lisp interface.
3051
3052 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3053 which are supported in the current configuration.
3054
3055 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3056 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3057 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3058 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3059 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3060
3061 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3062
3063 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3064 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3065 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3066 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3067 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3068 buffer.
3069
3070 +++
3071 ** Display margins.
3072
3073 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3074 and images.
3075
3076 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3077 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3078 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3079 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3080 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3081 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3082 of the display margins.
3083
3084 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3085 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3086 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3087 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3088 in this file).
3089
3090 +++
3091 ** Help display
3092
3093 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3094 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3095 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3096 that have a `help-echo' property.
3097
3098 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3099 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3100 the window in which the help was found.
3101
3102 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3103 `help-echo' text property was found.
3104
3105 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3106 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3107
3108 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3109 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3110 mouse.
3111
3112 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3113 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3114
3115 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3116 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3117 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3118 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3119 used as help string.
3120
3121 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3122 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3123 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3124
3125 +++
3126 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3127
3128 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3129 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3130
3131 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3132 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3133 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3134 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3135 used.
3136
3137 (global-set-key [A-down]
3138 #'(lambda ()
3139 (interactive)
3140 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3141 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3142 (global-set-key [A-up]
3143 #'(lambda ()
3144 (interactive)
3145 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3146 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3147
3148 +++
3149 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3150
3151 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3152 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3153 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3154 is called with one argument, POS.
3155
3156 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3157 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3158 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3159 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3160 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3161
3162 +++
3163 ** Tool bar support.
3164
3165 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3166 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3167 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3168 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3169 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3170 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3171
3172 *** Tool bar item definitions
3173
3174 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3175 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3176 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3177
3178 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3179 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3180 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3181 property (see below).
3182
3183 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3184 binding are currently ignored.
3185
3186 The following properties are recognized:
3187
3188 `:enable FORM'.
3189
3190 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3191 or disabled.
3192
3193 `:visible FORM'
3194
3195 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3196
3197 `:filter FUNCTION'
3198
3199 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3200 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3201 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3202
3203 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3204
3205 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3206 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3207
3208 `:image IMAGES'
3209
3210 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3211 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3212 meaning of each of the four elements:
3213
3214 Index Use when item is
3215 ----------------------------------------
3216 0 enabled and selected
3217 1 enabled and deselected
3218 2 disabled and selected
3219 3 disabled and deselected
3220
3221 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3222 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3223
3224 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3225
3226 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3227 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3228
3229 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3230
3231 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3232 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3233 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3234
3235 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3236 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3237
3238 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3239 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3240 pixels. Default is 1.
3241
3242 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3243 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3244
3245 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3246
3247 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3248 a tool bar item. If
3249
3250 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3251 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3252 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3253
3254 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3255
3256 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3257
3258 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3259 item.
3260
3261 ** Mode line changes.
3262
3263 +++
3264 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3265
3266 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3267 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3268 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3269
3270 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3271 a `local-map' text property.
3272
3273 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3274 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3275
3276 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3277 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3278 `local-map' property.
3279
3280 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3281 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3282 example.
3283
3284 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3285 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3286
3287 +++
3288 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3289 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3290
3291 +++
3292 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3293
3294 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3295 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3296 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3297 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3298 line.
3299
3300 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3301 `header-line'.
3302
3303 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3304 position in the header-line.
3305
3306 +++
3307 ** Text property `display'
3308
3309 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3310 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3311 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3312 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3313
3314 *** Variable width and height spaces
3315
3316 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3317 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3318 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3319 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3320 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3321 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3322 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3323
3324 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3325 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3326 properties described below.
3327
3328 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3329 characters having the `display' property.
3330
3331 - :width WIDTH
3332
3333 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3334 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3335
3336 - :relative-width FACTOR
3337
3338 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3339 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3340 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3341 width of that character by FACTOR.
3342
3343 - :align-to HPOS
3344
3345 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3346 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3347
3348 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3349
3350 - :height HEIGHT
3351
3352 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3353 normal line height.
3354
3355 - :relative-height FACTOR
3356
3357 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3358 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3359
3360 - :ascent ASCENT
3361
3362 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3363 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3364 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3365 equal to 100.
3366
3367 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3368
3369 *** Images
3370
3371 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3372 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3373 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3374 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3375 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3376 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3377 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3378 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3379 as display specification.
3380
3381 *** Other display properties
3382
3383 - :space-width FACTOR
3384
3385 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3386 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3387 integer or float.
3388
3389 - :height HEIGHT
3390
3391 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3392
3393 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3394 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3395 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3396 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3397 a font is available counts as a step.
3398
3399 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3400 as tall as the frame's default font.
3401
3402 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3403 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3404
3405 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3406 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3407
3408 - :raise FACTOR
3409
3410 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3411 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3412 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3413 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3414 `:height' subproperty.
3415
3416 *** Conditional display properties
3417
3418 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3419 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3420 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3421 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3422 the text having the `display' property.
3423
3424 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3425 `(:when t SPEC)'.
3426
3427 +++
3428 ** New menu separator types.
3429
3430 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3431 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3432 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3433 to specify other menu separator types.
3434
3435 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3436
3437 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3438 separator occurs.
3439
3440 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3441
3442 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3443
3444 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3445
3446 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3447
3448 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3449
3450 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3451
3452 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3453
3454 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3455
3456 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3457
3458 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3459 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3460
3461 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3462
3463 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3464
3465 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3466
3467 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3468
3469 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3470
3471 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3472
3473 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3474
3475 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3476
3477 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3478
3479 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3480
3481 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3482
3483 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3484
3485 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3486
3487 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3488
3489 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3490 the corresponding single-line separators.
3491
3492 +++
3493 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3494
3495 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3496 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3497 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3498 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3499 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3500 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3501 default foreground is black.
3502
3503 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3504 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3505 `ScrollBarBackground').
3506
3507 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3508 settings for scroll bar colors.
3509
3510 +++
3511 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3512 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3513
3514 ---
3515 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3516 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3517 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3518 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3519 the original window start.
3520
3521 ---
3522 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3523 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3524 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3525
3526 +++
3527 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3528
3529 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3530 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3531 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3532 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3533
3534 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3535 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3536
3537 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3538
3539 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3540 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3541 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3542 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3543 temporarily to nil, for example
3544
3545 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3546 (enlarge-window 10))
3547
3548 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3549 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3550
3551 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3552 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3553 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3554 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3555 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3556 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3557
3558
3559 ^L
3560 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3561
3562 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3563 input.
3564
3565 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3566
3567 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3568
3569 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3570 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3571 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3572 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3573 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3574
3575 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3576 been added.
3577
3578 ^L
3579 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3580
3581 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3582
3583 ^L
3584 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3585
3586 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3587 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3588 \f
3589 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3590
3591 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3592
3593 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3594 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3595 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3596
3597 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3598 is the one that is used.
3599
3600 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3601 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3602 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3603 separate from the command's regular output.
3604 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3605 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3606 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3607 the buffer name.
3608
3609 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3610 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3611 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3612 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3613
3614 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3615 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3616 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3617 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3618
3619 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3620 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3621 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3622 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3623
3624 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3625 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3626 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3627 they never ignore case.
3628
3629 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3630 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3631 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3632 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3633 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3634 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3635 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3636
3637 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3638 the same format that was used in the file before.
3639
3640 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3641 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3642
3643 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3644 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3645 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3646
3647 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3648 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3649 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3650 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3651 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3652 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3653 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3654
3655 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3656 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3657 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3658 format. You can now customize these variables.
3659
3660 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3661 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3662 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3663 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3664
3665 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3666 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3667 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3668
3669 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3670 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3671 doesn't have any effect.
3672
3673 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3674 not one per buffer.
3675
3676 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3677 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3678 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3679
3680 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3681 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3682 `auto-show-mode' command.
3683
3684 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3685 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3686 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3687 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3688 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3689
3690 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3691 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3692
3693 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3694 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3695 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3696
3697 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3698 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3699 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3700 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3701
3702 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3703
3704 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3705 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3706 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3707 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3708 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3709
3710 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3711 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3712
3713 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3714 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3715 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3716 `?' on other systems.
3717
3718 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3719 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3720 Unix.
3721
3722 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3723 current codepage when it starts.
3724
3725 ** Mail changes
3726
3727 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3728 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3729 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3730 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3731 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3732 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3733 latin-1:
3734
3735 MIME-version: 1.0
3736 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3737 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3738
3739 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3740 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3741 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3742 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3743 buffer-file-coding-system.
3744
3745 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3746 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3747 mail.
3748
3749 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3750 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3751 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3752 list of possible coding systems.
3753
3754 ** CC Mode changes
3755
3756 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3757 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3758 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3759 docstring for details.
3760
3761 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3762 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3763 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3764 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3765 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3766
3767 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3768 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3769
3770 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3771 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3772
3773 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3774 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3775 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3776 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3777 anonymous classes.
3778
3779 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3780 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3781
3782 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3783 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3784 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3785 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3786
3787 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3788 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3789 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3790 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3791 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3792
3793 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3794
3795 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3796
3797 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3798 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3799
3800 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3801
3802 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3803 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3804 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3805 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3806 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3807
3808 ** Gnus changes.
3809
3810 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3811 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3812 Gnus manual for the full story.
3813
3814 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3815 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3816 group, which is created automatically.
3817
3818 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3819 values.
3820
3821 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3822
3823 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3824 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3825
3826 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3827 `C-u C-c C-c'.
3828
3829 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3830
3831 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3832 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3833
3834 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3835
3836 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3837 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3838
3839 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3840 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3841
3842 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3843 control over simplification.
3844
3845 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3846
3847 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3848 limit.
3849
3850 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3851
3852 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3853
3854 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3855 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3856 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3857
3858 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3859 `a' forces normal posting method.
3860
3861 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3862 -- `W d'.
3863
3864 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3865 to a non-nil value.
3866
3867 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3868 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3869
3870 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3871 has been added.
3872
3873 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3874
3875 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3876
3877 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3878 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3879
3880 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3881 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3882
3883 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3884
3885 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3886 been added.
3887
3888 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3889 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3890
3891 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3892 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3893
3894 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3895
3896 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3897
3898 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3899
3900 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3901
3902 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3903 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3904 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3905
3906 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3907 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3908 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3909 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3910 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3911
3912 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3913 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3914 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3915 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3916
3917 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3918 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3919 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3920 mismatch.
3921
3922 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3923
3924 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3925 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3926
3927 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3928 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3929 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3930 removed from the label.
3931
3932 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3933 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3934
3935 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3936 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3937
3938 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3939 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3940 expressions.
3941
3942 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3943
3944 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3945
3946 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3947 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3948
3949 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3950 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3951 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3952
3953 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3954 changes with a special face.
3955
3956 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3957 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3958 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3959 \f
3960 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3961
3962 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3963 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3964 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3965 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3966 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3967
3968 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3969 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3970 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3971
3972 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3973 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3974 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3975 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3976 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3977 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3978 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3979 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3980 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3981
3982 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3983 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3984 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3985 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3986 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3987 program.
3988
3989 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3990 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3991 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3992 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3993 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3994 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3995
3996 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3997 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3998 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3999 was not documented clearly before.
4000
4001 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4002 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4003 \f
4004 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4005
4006 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4007 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4008 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4009 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4010
4011 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4012 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4013 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4014
4015 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4016
4017 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4018 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4019
4020 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4021 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4022 integers.
4023
4024 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4025 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4026 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4027 file names and attributes are returned.
4028
4029 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4030 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4031 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4032 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4033 returns the result.
4034
4035 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4036 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4037
4038 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4039
4040 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4041 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4042 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4043 optionally.
4044
4045 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4046 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4047
4048 **
4049 The new function process-running-child-p
4050 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4051 terminal to its own child process.
4052
4053 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4054 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4055 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4056 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4057
4058 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4059 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4060
4061 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4062 :included is an alias for :visible.
4063
4064 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4065 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4066 to move or copy menu entries.
4067
4068 ** Multibyte editing changes
4069
4070 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4071 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4072 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4073 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4074 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4075 (setq char (sref str idx)
4076 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4077 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4078
4079 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4080 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4081 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4082
4083 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4084 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4085 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4086
4087 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4088
4089 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4090 across the boundary.
4091
4092 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4093 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4094 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4095 contains 8-bit characters.
4096 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4097 contains invalid characters.
4098
4099 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4100 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4101 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4102 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4103 way.
4104
4105 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4106 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4107 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4108 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4109
4110 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4111 compose Thai characters in a string.
4112
4113 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4114 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4115 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4116 menus should always use the third argument.
4117
4118 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4119 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4120 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4121 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4122
4123 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4124 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4125 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4126 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4127
4128 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4129 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4130 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4131 echo area contents.
4132
4133 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4134
4135 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4136 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4137 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4138
4139 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4140 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4141 means to clear out that attribute.
4142
4143 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4144 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4145
4146 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4147 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4148 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4149 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4150
4151 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4152 the gap of the current buffer.
4153
4154 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4155 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4156 current buffer.
4157
4158 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4159 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4160 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4161 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4162 \f
4163 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4164
4165 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4166 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4167 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4168 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4169 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4170
4171 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4172 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4173 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4174 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4175 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4176
4177 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4178 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4179 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4180
4181 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4182 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4183 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4184 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4185 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4186 results.
4187
4188 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4189 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4190 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4191 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4192 \f
4193 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4194
4195 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4196 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4197 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4198 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4199
4200 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4201 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4202 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4203 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4204 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4205 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4206 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4207 region.
4208
4209 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4210 selective undo.
4211
4212 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4213 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4214 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4215 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4216 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4217
4218 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4219 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4220 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4221 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4222
4223 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4224 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4225 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4226 something that most users not do.
4227
4228 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4229 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4230 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4231 applications.
4232
4233 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4234 pasting operations.
4235
4236 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4237 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4238 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4239 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4240 `ps-printer-name'.
4241
4242 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4243 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4244 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4245 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4246 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4247 hits a new word.
4248
4249 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4250 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4251 to be confused by TeX commands.
4252
4253 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4254 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4255 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4256 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4257
4258 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4259 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4260 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4261 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4262 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4263
4264 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4265 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4266
4267 ** Changes in input method usage.
4268
4269 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4270 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4271 respectively.
4272
4273 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4274
4275 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4276 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4277
4278 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4279 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4280
4281 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4282
4283 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4284
4285 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4286 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4287
4288 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4289 given in the following case:
4290 o When you are using a complex input method.
4291 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4292
4293 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4294 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4295 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4296 setting it to t is helpful.
4297
4298 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4299
4300 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4301 keys:
4302 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4303 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4304 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4305 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4306 environment.
4307
4308 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4309 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4310 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4311 get
4312
4313 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4314
4315 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4316
4317 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4318 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4319
4320 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4321 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4322 its owner and group.
4323
4324 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4325 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4326
4327 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4328 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4329
4330 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4331 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4332 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4333 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4334
4335 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4336 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4337 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4338 for writing keyboard macros.
4339
4340 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4341 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4342 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4343 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4344 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4345 info.
4346
4347 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4348
4349 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4350 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4351 contents only.
4352
4353 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4354 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4355 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4356 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4357
4358 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4359 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4360 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4361
4362 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4363 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4364 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4365 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4366
4367 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4368 failure if the command produces no output.
4369
4370 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4371 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4372 the mouse.
4373
4374 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4375 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4376 function and variable names.
4377
4378 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4379 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4380 file-coding-system-alist.
4381
4382 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4383 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4384 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4385 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4386 according to the current fontset.
4387
4388 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4389
4390 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4391 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4392 nonascii-insert-offset.
4393
4394 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4395 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4396 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4397 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4398
4399 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4400 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4401
4402 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4403 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4404
4405 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4406 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4407 command keys.
4408
4409 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4410 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4411
4412 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4413 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4414 all variables that have documentation.
4415
4416 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4417 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4418 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4419 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4420 it should show; the default is 20.
4421
4422 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4423 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4424 of your input.
4425
4426 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4427 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4428 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4429 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4430 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4431 Newly added options are included as well.
4432
4433 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4434 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4435 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4436
4437 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4438 Customize menu.
4439
4440 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4441 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4442
4443 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4444 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4445 invoked.
4446
4447 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4448 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4449 The default is 1.
4450
4451 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4452 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4453 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4454 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4455 sensibly.
4456
4457 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4458
4459 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4460 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4461 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4462
4463 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4464 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4465 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4466 every night.
4467
4468 ** Desktop changes
4469
4470 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4471 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4472
4473 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4474 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4475
4476 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4477 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4478
4479 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4480 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4481 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4482 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4483 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4484 made invisible again.
4485
4486 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4487
4488 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4489 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4490 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4491 toggle.
4492
4493 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4494 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4495 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4496 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4497 rmail-default-body-file.
4498
4499 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4500 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4501 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4502
4503 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4504 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4505 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4506
4507 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4508 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4509 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4510 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4511 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4512 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4513
4514 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4515 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4516 provided by feedmail are:
4517
4518 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4519 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4520 there is also a queue for draft messages
4521
4522 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4523 be prompted for confirmation
4524
4525 **** does smart filling of address headers
4526
4527 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4528 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4529 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4530
4531 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4532 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4533 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4534 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4535
4536 ** Dired changes
4537
4538 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4539 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4540
4541 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4542 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4543
4544 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4545 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4546 for a specified regexp.
4547
4548 ** VC Changes
4549
4550 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4551 conveniently.
4552
4553 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4554 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4555 Dired.
4556
4557 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4558 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4559 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4560 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4561
4562 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4563 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4564 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4565 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4566 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4567
4568 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4569 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4570 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4571 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4572 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4573
4574 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4575 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4576 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4577 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4578
4579 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4580 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4581 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4582
4583 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4584 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4585 session to resolve them.
4586
4587 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4588 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4589 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4590 uses as well).
4591
4592 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4593 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4594 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4595 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4596 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4597 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4598 using ediff.
4599
4600 ** Changes in Font Lock
4601
4602 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4603 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4604 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4605 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4606 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4607
4608 ** Frame name display changes
4609
4610 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4611 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4612 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4613 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4614
4615 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4616 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4617 menu.
4618
4619 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4620
4621 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4622 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4623 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4624
4625 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4626
4627 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4628 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4629 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4630
4631 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4632 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4633 the following line.
4634
4635 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4636 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4637 previously sent input.
4638
4639 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4640 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4641 as the search string.
4642
4643 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4644 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4645
4646 ** C mode changes
4647
4648 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4649 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4650 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4651 definition.
4652
4653 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4654 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4655 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4656 style is still the default however.
4657
4658 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4659
4660 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4661 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4662 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4663
4664 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4665 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4666
4667 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4668 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4669
4670 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4671 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4672
4673 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4674 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4675
4676 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4677 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4678 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4679 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4680
4681 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4682
4683 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4684 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4685 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4686
4687 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4688 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4689 expanding dynamically.
4690
4691 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4692 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4693
4694 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4695 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4696 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4697 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4698
4699 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4700
4701 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4702
4703 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4704 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4705 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4706 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4707 against the first word in the title.
4708
4709 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4710 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4711 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4712 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4713 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4714 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4715
4716 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4717 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4718 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4719 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4720
4721 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4722
4723 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4724 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4725 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4726 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4727 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4728 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4729
4730 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4731 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4732
4733 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4734 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4735 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4736
4737 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4738 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4739
4740 ** Ispell changes.
4741
4742 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4743 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4744 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4745
4746 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4747 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4748 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4749 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4750 include:
4751
4752 o URLs are automatically skipped
4753 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4754
4755 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4756
4757 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4758
4759 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4760 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4761 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4762 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4763
4764 *** New recursive parser.
4765
4766 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4767 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4768 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4769
4770 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4771
4772 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4773 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4774 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4775
4776 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4777
4778 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4779
4780 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4781
4782 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4783
4784 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4785
4786 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4787 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4788
4789 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4790
4791 *** References to external documents.
4792
4793 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4794 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4795 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4796 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4797 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4798 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4799 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4800
4801 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4802
4803 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4804 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4805
4806 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4807 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4808
4809 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4810
4811 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4812 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4813
4814 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4815
4816 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4817 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4818 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4819 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4820 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4821 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4822 more.
4823
4824 *** Support for the varioref package
4825
4826 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4827
4828 *** New hooks
4829
4830 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4831 and citations are created. These hooks are
4832 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4833 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4834
4835 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4836
4837 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4838 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4839
4840 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4841
4842 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4843 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4844 fontified, use
4845
4846 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4847
4848 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4849 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4850 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4851 directories that contain the same file name.
4852
4853 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4854 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4855 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4856 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4857 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4858 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4859 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4860 directory.
4861
4862 ** New modes and packages
4863
4864 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4865 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4866 it, but some do not.
4867
4868 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4869 code.
4870
4871 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4872 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4873 around in a buffer.
4874
4875 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4876
4877 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4878 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4879 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4880 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4881
4882 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4883 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4884 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4885
4886 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4887 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4888 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4889 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4890 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4891 the like.
4892
4893 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4894 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4895
4896 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4897 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4898 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4899 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4900
4901 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4902
4903 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4904 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4905 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4906 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4907 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4908 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4909 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4910 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4911 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4912 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4913 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4914
4915 Platform-specific modes:
4916
4917 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4918 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4919 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4920 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4921 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4922 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4923 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4924 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4925 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4926 \f
4927 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4928
4929 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4930 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4931 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4932 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4933
4934 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4935 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4936 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4937
4938 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4939 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4940 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4941 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4942
4943 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4944 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4945 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4946 environment.
4947
4948 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4949 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4950 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4951 current input method for reading this one event.
4952
4953 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4954 now control whether to output certain characters as
4955 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4956 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4957 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4958 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4959 \f
4960 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4961
4962 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4963 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4964
4965 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4966 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4967 always increases point by 1.
4968
4969 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4970 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4971
4972 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4973
4974 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4975 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4976 default value changed. For example,
4977
4978 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4979 :type 'integer
4980 :group 'foo
4981 :version "20.3")
4982
4983 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4984 :version "20.3")
4985
4986 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4987 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4988 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4989 `:version' in the top level group.
4990
4991 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4992
4993 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4994 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4995
4996 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4997 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4998 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4999 to themselves.
5000
5001 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5002 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5003 values whatever.
5004
5005 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5006 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5007 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5008
5009 ** Frame-local variables.
5010
5011 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5012 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5013 local bindings for that variable.
5014
5015 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5016 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5017 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5018 parameter name.
5019
5020 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5021 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5022 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5023 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5024
5025 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5026 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5027 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5028 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5029
5030 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5031 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5032 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5033 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5034 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5035
5036 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5037 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5038 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5039 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5040
5041 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5042 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5043
5044 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5045 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5046 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5047
5048 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5049 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5050 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5051 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5052
5053 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5054 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5055 empty input.
5056
5057 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5058 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5059 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5060 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5061 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5062
5063 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5064 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5065 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5066 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5067
5068 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5069 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5070 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5071 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5072 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5073
5074 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5075 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5076 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5077 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5078
5079 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5080 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5081 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5082
5083 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5084 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5085 was directed to display this buffer.
5086
5087 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5088 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5089 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5090 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5091 set-window-configuration.
5092
5093 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5094 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5095 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5096 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5097
5098 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5099 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5100 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5101
5102 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5103 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5104 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5105
5106 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5107 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5108
5109 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5110 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5111
5112 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5113 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5114 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5115
5116 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5117 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5118 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5119 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5120
5121 ** Menu changes
5122
5123 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5124 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5125 better supported.
5126
5127 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5128 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5129 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5130 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5131 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5132
5133 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5134
5135 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5136 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5137 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5138 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5139
5140 The format is:
5141 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5142 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5143 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5144 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5145 The supported properties include
5146
5147 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5148 item is enabled.
5149 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5150 item should appear in the menu.
5151 :filter FILTER-FN
5152 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5153 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5154 It should return a binding to use instead.
5155 :keys DESCRIPTION
5156 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5157 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5158 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5159 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5160 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5161 keyboard binding.
5162 :key-sequence nil
5163 This means that the command normally has no
5164 keyboard equivalent.
5165 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5166 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5167 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5168 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5169 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5170
5171 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5172 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5173
5174 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5175
5176 ** New event types
5177
5178 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5179 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5180 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5181 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5182
5183 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5184
5185 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5186 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5187 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5188 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5189 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5190 forward, away from the user.
5191
5192 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5193
5194 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5195 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5196 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5197 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5198 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5199
5200 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5201
5202 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5203 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5204 that were dragged and dropped.
5205
5206 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5207
5208 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5209
5210 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5211 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5212 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5213
5214 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5215 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5216 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5217
5218 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5219 in Emacs 19 and before.
5220
5221 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5222 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5223
5224 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5225 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5226 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5227 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5228
5229 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5230 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5231 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5232 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5233 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5234
5235 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5236 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5237 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5238 consistent with the new representation.
5239
5240 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5241 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5242 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5243 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5244
5245 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5246 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5247 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5248
5249 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5250 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5251 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5252
5253 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5254 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5255 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5256
5257 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5258 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5259
5260 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5261 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5262
5263 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5264 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5265 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5266 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5267
5268 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5269 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5270
5271 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5272 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5273 buffer or string being searched.
5274
5275 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5276 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5277 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5278 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5279 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5280 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5281 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5282
5283 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5284
5285 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5286 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5287 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5288 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5289 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5290 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5291 define-coding-system-alias.
5292
5293 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5294 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5295 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5296 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5297 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5298 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5299 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5300 `iso-8859-1'.
5301
5302 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5303 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5304 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5305 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5306
5307 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5308 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5309 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5310 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5311
5312 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5313 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5314 This function requires a user interaction.
5315
5316 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5317 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5318 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5319 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5320 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5321 select-safe-coding-system.
5322
5323 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5324 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5325 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5326 was done.
5327
5328 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5329 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5330 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5331
5332 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5333 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5334 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5335 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5336
5337 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5338 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5339 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5340 converted.
5341
5342 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5343 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5344
5345 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5346 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5347 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5348 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5349 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5350 range of characters.
5351
5352 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5353 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5354
5355 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5356 in the current buffer at position POS.
5357
5358 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5359 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5360 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5361 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5362 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5363 binding input-method-function to nil.
5364
5365 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5366 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5367 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5368 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5369 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5370
5371 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5372 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5373
5374 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5375 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5376
5377 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5378 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5379 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5380 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5381 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5382 \f
5383 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5384
5385 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5386 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5387 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5388 tree structure.
5389
5390 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5391 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5392
5393 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5394 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5395 in your .emacs file.)
5396
5397 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5398 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5399
5400 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5401 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5402
5403 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5404 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5405 kills the region.
5406
5407 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5408 delete the character before point, as usual.
5409
5410 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5411 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5412 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5413
5414 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5415 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5416 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5417 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5418 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5419 past.)
5420
5421 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5422 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5423 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5424 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5425 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5426
5427 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5428 and is an alias for it.
5429
5430 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5431 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5432
5433 ** Scrolling changes
5434
5435 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5436 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5437
5438 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5439 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5440 where it started.
5441
5442 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5443 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5444 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5445 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5446
5447 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5448 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5449 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5450 recenters the window.
5451
5452 ** International character set support (MULE)
5453
5454 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5455 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5456 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5457 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5458 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5459 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5460
5461 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5462 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5463 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5464 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5465 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5466
5467 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5468 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5469 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5470 language, to make it possible to type them.
5471
5472 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5473 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5474
5475 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5476 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5477
5478 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5479
5480 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5481
5482 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5483 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5484 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5485 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5486 characters for their work until they want to change.
5487
5488 *** Input methods
5489
5490 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5491 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5492 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5493 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5494 support several input methods.
5495
5496 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5497 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5498 work.
5499
5500 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5501 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5502 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5503 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5504 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5505 letter.
5506
5507 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5508 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5509 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5510 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5511 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5512
5513 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5514 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5515 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5516 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5517
5518 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5519 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5520 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5521 the first guess is wrong.
5522
5523 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5524 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5525
5526 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5527 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5528 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5529 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5530
5531 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5532 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5533 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5534 translate automatically to and from either one.
5535
5536 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5537
5538 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5539 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5540 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5541 what you want.
5542
5543 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5544 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5545 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5546 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5547
5548 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5549 character conversion as well.
5550
5551 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5552
5553 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5554 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5555 requires using many fonts.
5556
5557 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5558 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5559
5560 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5561 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5562 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5563 you would use a font.
5564
5565 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5566 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5567 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5568
5569 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5570 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5571 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5572 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5573 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5574
5575 *** Defining fontsets.
5576
5577 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5578 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5579 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5580
5581 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5582 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5583 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5584 standard fontset are created automatically.
5585
5586 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5587 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5588 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5589 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5590 name is `fontset-startup'.
5591
5592 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5593 The resource value should have this form:
5594 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5595 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5596 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5597 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5598 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5599 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5600 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5601 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5602 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5603
5604 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5605 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5606 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5607
5608 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5609 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5610 following resource,
5611 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5612 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5613 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5614 Here is the substitution rule:
5615 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5616 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5617 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5618 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5619 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5620
5621 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5622 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5623 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5624
5625 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5626 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5627 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5628 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5629 fontsets.
5630
5631 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5632 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5633
5634 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5635 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5636 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5637 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5638 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5639 system for new files that you create.
5640
5641 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5642 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5643 whole Emacs session.
5644
5645 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5646 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5647 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5648
5649 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5650 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5651 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5652 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5653 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5654
5655 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5656 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5657 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5658 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5659 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5660
5661 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5662 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5663
5664 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5665 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5666
5667 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5668 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5669
5670 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5671 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5672 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5673 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5674 of the file.
5675
5676 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5677 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5678 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5679 translated into that character code.
5680
5681 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5682 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5683
5684 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5685
5686 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5687 the coding system for keyboard input.
5688
5689 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5690 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5691 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5692
5693 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5694
5695 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5696 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5697 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5698 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5699 designed to work with terminals.
5700
5701 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5702 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5703 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5704 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5705 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5706 in the corresponding buffer.
5707
5708 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5709
5710 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5711 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5712 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5713
5714 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5715 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5716 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5717 want to use.
5718
5719 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5720 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5721
5722 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5723 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5724 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5725 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5726
5727 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5728 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5729 related information.
5730
5731 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5732 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5733 scripts.
5734
5735 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5736 information about the support for a particular language.
5737 You specify the language as an argument.
5738
5739 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5740 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5741 first dash.
5742
5743 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5744 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5745 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5746 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5747
5748 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5749 B big5 (Chinese)
5750 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5751 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5752 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5753 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5754 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5755 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5756 K euc-korea (Korean)
5757 R koi8 (Russian)
5758 Q tibetan
5759 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5760 T lao
5761 T tis620 (Thai)
5762 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5763 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5764 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5765 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5766 z hz (Chinese)
5767
5768 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5769 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5770 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5771 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5772
5773 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5774 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5775
5776 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5777 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5778 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5779 Rmail files themselves.
5780
5781 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5782 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5783
5784 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5785 for sending mail:
5786
5787 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5788 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5789 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5790 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5791 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5792
5793 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5794 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5795 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5796 translations.
5797
5798 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5799 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5800 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5801 without any conversion.
5802
5803 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5804 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5805 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5806 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5807
5808 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5809 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5810
5811 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5812 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5813
5814 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5815 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5816
5817 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5818 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5819 in the buffer before point.
5820
5821 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5822 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5823 you are using.
5824
5825 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5826 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5827
5828 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5829
5830 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5831 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5832
5833 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5834 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5835 can become a bottleneck.
5836
5837 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5838 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5839 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5840 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5841 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5842 so useful that the change is worth while.
5843
5844 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5845 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5846 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5847 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5848
5849 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5850 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5851 show-paren-mode.
5852
5853 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5854 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5855 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5856
5857 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5858 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5859 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5860
5861 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5862 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5863 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5864
5865 ** Changes in View mode.
5866
5867 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5868 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5869
5870 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5871 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5872
5873 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5874 previous state.
5875
5876 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5877 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5878
5879 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5880 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5881 not just the selected window.
5882
5883 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5884 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5885 turns View mode on or off.
5886
5887 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5888 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5889 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5890
5891 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5892 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5893
5894 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5895 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5896 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5897 which version to compare with.
5898
5899 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5900 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5901
5902 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5903 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5904 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5905 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5906
5907 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5908 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5909 blocks, all of them or none.
5910
5911 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5912 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5913 confirmation first.
5914
5915 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5916 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5917 However, the mode will not be changed if
5918 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5919 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5920 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5921 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5922
5923 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5924
5925 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5926 these commands do not change the major mode.
5927
5928 ** M-x occur changes.
5929
5930 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5931 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5932
5933 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5934 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5935 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5936
5937 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5938 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5939 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5940 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5941 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5942
5943 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5944 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5945 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5946 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5947
5948 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5949 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5950 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5951
5952 ** Outline mode changes.
5953
5954 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5955
5956 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5957
5958 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5959 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5960 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5961 was already active.
5962
5963 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5964 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5965 get confused by it.
5966
5967 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5968 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5969
5970 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5971
5972 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5973 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5974 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5975 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5976
5977 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5978 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5979 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5980
5981 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5982 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5983 values.
5984
5985 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5986 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5987 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5988 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5989
5990 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5991 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5992 can be. The default value is 30.
5993
5994 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5995
5996 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5997 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5998 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5999 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6000 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6001 behavior.
6002
6003 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6004 compose-mail-other-frame.
6005
6006 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6007 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6008 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6009 buffer that shows the original message.
6010
6011 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6012 with separator lines around the contents.
6013
6014 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6015 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6016 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6017 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6018
6019 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6020
6021 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6022 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6023 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6024 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6025
6026 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6027 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6028 /etc/passwd.
6029
6030 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6031 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6032 /etc/passwd.
6033
6034 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6035 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6036 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6037 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6038
6039 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6040 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6041 be taken to be magic.
6042
6043 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6044 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6045 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6046
6047 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6048 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6049
6050 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6051 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6052
6053 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6054
6055 new key dired.el binding old key
6056 ------- ---------------- -------
6057 * c dired-change-marks c
6058 * m dired-mark m
6059 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6060 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6061 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6062 * u dired-unmark u
6063 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6064 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6065 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6066 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6067 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6068 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6069
6070 ** Rmail changes.
6071
6072 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6073 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6074 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6075 each time you run it.
6076
6077 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6078 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6079
6080 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6081 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6082 means to move in the opposite direction.
6083
6084 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6085 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6086
6087 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6088 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6089 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6090 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6091 for output.
6092
6093 ** Gnus changes.
6094
6095 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6096
6097 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6098 Gnus.
6099
6100 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6101 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6102
6103 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6104 article mode line.
6105
6106 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6107
6108 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6109
6110 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6111
6112 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6113 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6114 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6115
6116 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6117
6118 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6119
6120 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6121 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6122
6123 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6124 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6125 used to pick articles.
6126
6127 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6128 another have been added.
6129
6130 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6131
6132 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6133 generating lines in buffers.
6134
6135 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6136 `M-C-_'.
6137
6138 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6139
6140 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6141
6142 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6143
6144 *** Scores can be decayed.
6145
6146 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6147
6148 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6149 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6150
6151 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6152 the native server.
6153
6154 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6155
6156 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6157 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6158
6159 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6160
6161 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6162 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6163
6164 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6165 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6166
6167 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6168 a group.
6169
6170 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6171 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6172
6173 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6174
6175 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6176
6177 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6178
6179 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6180
6181 Use the `Y c' command.
6182
6183 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6184
6185 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6186
6187 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6188
6189 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6190 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6191
6192 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6193
6194 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6195
6196 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6197 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6198
6199 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6200
6201 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6202 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6203 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6204 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6205 this issue.)
6206
6207 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6208 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6209 particular news group. This can be done by:
6210
6211 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6212
6213 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6214 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6215 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6216 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6217 for reading and posting).
6218
6219 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6220 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6221 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6222 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6223 there.
6224
6225 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6226 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6227
6228 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6229 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6230 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6231 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6232 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6233
6234 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6235 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6236
6237 ** CC mode changes.
6238
6239 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6240 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6241 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6242 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6243 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6244 loaded.
6245
6246 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6247 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6248 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6249 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6250 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6251 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6252
6253 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6254 of the current buffer.
6255
6256 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6257 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6258 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6259
6260 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6261 style that the Python developers like.
6262
6263 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6264 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6265 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6266
6267 ** VC Changes [new]
6268
6269 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6270 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6271 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6272
6273 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6274 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6275 developers.
6276
6277 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6278 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6279
6280 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6281 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6282 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6283 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6284
6285 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6286 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6287
6288 ** Calendar changes.
6289
6290 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6291 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6292 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6293
6294 ** ps-print changes
6295
6296 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6297
6298 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6299
6300 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6301 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6302 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6303 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6304 It defaults to `letter'.
6305 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6306
6307 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6308 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6309 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6310
6311 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6312 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6313 It defaults to 1.
6314
6315 *** Horizontal layout
6316
6317 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6318 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6319 All are measured in points.
6320
6321 *** Vertical layout
6322
6323 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6324 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6325 All are measured in points.
6326
6327 *** Headers
6328
6329 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6330 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6331 margin above the text.
6332
6333 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6334 framing box is printed around the header.
6335
6336 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6337 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6338
6339 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6340 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6341 `ps-header-font-size'.
6342
6343 *** Font managing
6344
6345 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6346 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6347 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6348 elements to this alist.
6349
6350 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6351 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6352
6353 ** hideshow changes.
6354
6355 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6356 C++, ; for lisp).
6357
6358 *** Support for java-mode added.
6359
6360 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6361 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6362
6363 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6364 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6365 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6366
6367 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6368 robust and a lot faster.
6369
6370 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6371
6372 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6373 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6374 documentation for more details.
6375
6376 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6377
6378 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6379 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6380 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6381 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6382 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6383
6384 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6385 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6386 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6387 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6388
6389 ** Font Lock mode
6390
6391 *** Custom support
6392
6393 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6394 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6395 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6396 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6397 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6398 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6399
6400 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6401
6402 *** Maximum decoration
6403
6404 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6405 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6406 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6407 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6408 to get the old behavior.
6409
6410 *** New support
6411
6412 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6413
6414 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6415 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6416
6417 *** Configurable support
6418
6419 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6420 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6421 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6422 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6423 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6424 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6425 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6426
6427 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6428 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6429 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6430
6431 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6432
6433 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6434 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6435 for any mode.
6436
6437 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6438
6439 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6440
6441 in your ~/.emacs.
6442
6443 *** New faces
6444
6445 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6446 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6447 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6448 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6449
6450 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6451
6452 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6453 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6454 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6455
6456 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6457
6458 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6459 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6460 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6461 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6462 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6463 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6464 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6465
6466 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6467 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6468 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6469 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6470 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6471 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6472
6473 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6474
6475 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6476 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6477 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6478 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6479
6480 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6481 settings.
6482
6483 ** Ada mode changes.
6484
6485 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6486 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6487 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6488 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6489 stubs.
6490
6491 *** There are two new commands:
6492 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6493 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6494
6495 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6496 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6497 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6498
6499 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6500 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6501 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6502
6503 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6504 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6505 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6506 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6507
6508 ** Scheme mode changes.
6509
6510 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6511 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6512 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6513 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6514 have any effect.
6515
6516 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6517 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6518 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6519 variables as buffer-local variables.
6520
6521 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6522 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6523
6524 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6525
6526 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6527 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6528 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6529 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6530
6531 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6532 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6533 buffer in Emacs.
6534
6535 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6536 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6537 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6538 option takes precedence.
6539
6540 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6541 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6542 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6543
6544 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6545 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6546 the current defun.
6547
6548 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6549 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6550
6551 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6552 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6553 necessary).
6554
6555 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6556 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6557 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6558 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6559 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6560 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6561
6562 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6563 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6564 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6565 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6566
6567 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6568 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6569 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6570 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6571 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6572
6573 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6574 since it applies only to the current frame.
6575
6576 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6577 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6578 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6579
6580 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6581 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6582 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6583 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6584 instead of just the file you are editing.
6585
6586 ** RefTeX mode
6587
6588 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6589 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6590 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6591 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6592 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6593
6594 C-c ( reftex-label
6595 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6596 knows which kind of label is needed.
6597
6598 C-c ) reftex-reference
6599 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6600 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6601
6602 C-c [ reftex-citation
6603 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6604 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6605
6606 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6607 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6608
6609 C-c = reftex-toc
6610 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6611 can quickly jump to every section.
6612
6613 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6614 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6615 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6616 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6617 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6618
6619 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6620
6621 *** Info documentation is now available.
6622
6623 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6624 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6625
6626 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6627 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6628
6629 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6630 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6631
6632 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6633 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6634 appropriate functions.
6635
6636 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6637 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6638
6639 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6640 been cleaned.
6641
6642 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6643 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6644
6645 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6646 shall be delimited.
6647
6648 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6649 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6650 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6651
6652 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6653 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6654 prefixed with `ALT'.
6655
6656 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6657 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6658 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6659 documentation).
6660
6661 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6662 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6663 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6664
6665 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6666 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6667
6668 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6669 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6670 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6671
6672 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6673
6674 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6675
6676 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6677 from alien sources.
6678
6679 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6680 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6681 crossref entries.
6682
6683 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6684 region.
6685
6686 *** Added support for imenu.
6687
6688 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6689 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6690 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6691 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6692
6693 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6694 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6695
6696 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6697
6698 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6699
6700 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6701 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6702 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6703 as an argument.
6704
6705 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6706 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6707
6708 ** browse-url changes
6709
6710 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6711 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6712 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6713 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6714 customization variables.
6715
6716 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6717
6718 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6719 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6720 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6721
6722 ** Changes in Ediff
6723
6724 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6725 pops up the Info file for this command.
6726
6727 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6728 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6729 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6730 directories).
6731
6732 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6733 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6734 files in the same directory.
6735
6736 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6737 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6738 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6739
6740 ** Changes in Viper
6741
6742 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6743 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6744 instead of vip-.
6745 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6746 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6747 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6748 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6749 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6750 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6751 color when Viper is in insert state.
6752 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6753 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6754 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6755
6756 ** Etags changes.
6757
6758 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6759 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6760 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6761 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6762 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6763
6764 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6765
6766 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6767 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6768
6769 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6770 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6771 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6772
6773 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6774 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6775 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6776 methods and protocols.
6777
6778 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6779 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6780 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6781 paragraph name.
6782
6783 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6784 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6785 at least M times and as many as N times.
6786
6787 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6788 in files has changed slightly.
6789
6790 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6791 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6792 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6793 with old time-stamp-format values.
6794
6795 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6796 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6797 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6798 reasons.
6799
6800 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6801 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6802 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6803 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6804 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6805 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6806
6807 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6808 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6809 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6810
6811 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6812 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6813 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6814 recommended now will continue to work then.
6815
6816 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6817 details.
6818
6819 ** There are some additional major modes:
6820
6821 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6822 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6823 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6824
6825 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6826 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6827 into Emacs.
6828
6829 ** New Lisp packages include:
6830
6831 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6832
6833 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6834 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6835
6836 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6837
6838 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6839 in shell buffers.
6840
6841 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6842 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6843 and `elint-defun'.
6844
6845 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6846 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6847 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6848 strings or comments.
6849
6850 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6851 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6852 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6853 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6854 at these points.
6855
6856 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6857 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6858
6859 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6860 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6861
6862 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6863
6864 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6865 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6866
6867 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6868
6869 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6870
6871 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6872
6873 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6874 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6875
6876 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6877 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6878 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6879 original place after inserting the copy.
6880
6881 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6882 on the buffer.
6883
6884 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6885 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6886 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6887
6888 Enable mouse-drag with:
6889 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6890 -or-
6891 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6892
6893 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6894 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6895
6896 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6897 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6898
6899 *** ogonek
6900
6901 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6902 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6903 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6904 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6905 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6906 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6907 instance) and vice versa.
6908
6909 To use this package load it using
6910 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6911 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6912 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6913 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6914 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6915 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6916
6917 *** Interface to ph.
6918
6919 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6920
6921 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6922 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6923 these servers.
6924
6925 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6926
6927 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6928 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6929 while the real cursor does not move.
6930
6931 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6932 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6933
6934 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6935 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6936
6937 ** movemail change
6938
6939 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6940 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6941 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6942 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6943
6944 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6945 \f
6946 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6947
6948 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6949
6950 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6951 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6952 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6953 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6954 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6955
6956 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6957 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6958 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6959 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6960 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6961 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6962 \f
6963 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6964
6965 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6966 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6967 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6968 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6969
6970 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6971 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6972
6973 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6974 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6975 "win".
6976
6977 ** Basic Lisp changes
6978
6979 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6980 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6981
6982 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6983 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6984 or by the user.
6985
6986 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6987
6988 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6989
6990 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6991 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6992
6993 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6994 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6995 its argument.
6996
6997 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6998
6999 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7000
7001 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7002
7003 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7004 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7005 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7006 `format' function.
7007
7008 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7009 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7010 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7011
7012 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7013 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7014 adding one of these suffixes.
7015
7016 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7017 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7018 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7019
7020 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7021 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7022
7023 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7024
7025 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7026 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7027
7028 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7029 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7030
7031 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7032
7033 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7034 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7035
7036 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7037 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7038 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7039 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7040
7041 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7042 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7043 of the last form.
7044
7045 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7046 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7047 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7048 as the last form.
7049
7050 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7051 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7052 matches.
7053
7054 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7055
7056 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7057 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7058 Then it returns that string.
7059
7060 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7061
7062 (with-output-to-string
7063 (princ "The buffer is ")
7064 (princ (buffer-name)))
7065
7066 returns "The buffer is foo".
7067
7068 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7069 is non-nil.
7070
7071 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7072 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7073 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7074
7075 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7076 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7077
7078 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7079 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7080 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7081 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7082 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7083 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7084
7085 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7086 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7087 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7088 characters".
7089
7090 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7091 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7092 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7093 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7094 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7095
7096 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7097 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7098 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7099 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7100
7101 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7102 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7103
7104 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7105
7106 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7107 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7108 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7109 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7110 guaranteed.
7111
7112 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7113 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7114 character).
7115
7116 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7117
7118 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7119 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7120 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7121 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7122 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7123
7124 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7125
7126 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7127 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7128 more than the number of characters.
7129
7130 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7131 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7132 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7133 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7134 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7135 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7136
7137 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7138 and returns a string containing those characters.
7139
7140 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7141 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7142 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7143 character, sref signals an error.
7144
7145 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7146 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7147 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7148
7149 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7150 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7151 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7152
7153 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7154 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7155 to a vector of the characters in it.
7156
7157 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7158 of a string. You call it as follows:
7159
7160 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7161
7162 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7163 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7164 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7165 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7166 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7167
7168 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7169 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7170
7171 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7172 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7173
7174 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7175 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7176 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7177 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7178
7179 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7180
7181 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7182
7183 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7184 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7185 are not included in the resulting value.
7186
7187 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7188 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7189 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7190 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7191
7192 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7193 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7194 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7195 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7196 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7197 column START-COLUMN.
7198
7199 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7200 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7201 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7202 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7203 changed text, before the change.
7204
7205 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7206 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7207 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7208
7209 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7210
7211 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7212
7213 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7214 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7215
7216 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7217 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7218 which identify the character within that character set.
7219
7220 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7221 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7222 opposite of split-char.
7223
7224 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7225 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7226
7227 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7228 of all the characters in a string.
7229
7230 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7231 and specifying coding systems.
7232
7233 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7234 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7235 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7236 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7237 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7238 as what to do about code conversion.)
7239
7240 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7241 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7242
7243 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7244 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7245 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7246
7247 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7248 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7249 to match against a file name.
7250
7251 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7252 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7253 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7254 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7255 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7256 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7257
7258 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7259 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7260
7261 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7262 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7263
7264 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7265 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7266 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7267 service names.
7268
7269 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7270 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7271 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7272 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7273 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7274 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7275
7276 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7277 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7278
7279 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7280 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7281 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7282 start the subprocess.
7283
7284 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7285 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7286 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7287 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7288 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7289
7290 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7291 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7292 subprocess.
7293
7294 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7295 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7296 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7297 connection permanently or until overridden.
7298
7299 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7300 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7301 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7302 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7303 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7304 system for one operation at a time.
7305
7306 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7307 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7308
7309 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7310 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7311 The value is a cons cell,
7312 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7313 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7314 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7315 input to the subprocess.
7316
7317 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7318 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7319
7320 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7321 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7322 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7323
7324 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7325 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7326 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7327 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7328 customization.
7329
7330 Thus, instead of writing
7331
7332 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7333 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7334
7335 you would now write this:
7336
7337 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7338 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7339 :type 'boolean
7340 :group foo)
7341
7342 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7343 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7344 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7345 for a description of them.
7346
7347 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7348 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7349
7350 (defgroup ispell nil
7351 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7352 :group 'processes)
7353
7354 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7355 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7356 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7357 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7358 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7359
7360 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7361 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7362 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7363 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7364 first-level subgroups.
7365
7366 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7367
7368 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7369 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7370
7371 ** easy-mmode
7372
7373 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7374 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7375 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7376 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7377 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7378 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7379
7380 ** Text property changes
7381
7382 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7383 text property.
7384
7385 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7386 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7387 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7388 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7389 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7390
7391 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7392 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7393 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7394 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7395
7396 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7397 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7398 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7399
7400 ** Changes in invisibility features
7401
7402 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7403 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7404 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7405 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7406 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7407 make the overlay visible.
7408
7409 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7410 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7411 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7412 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7413 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7414 t when it should hide it.
7415
7416 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7417
7418 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7419 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7420 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7421 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7422 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7423 Here is an example of how to do this:
7424
7425 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7426 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7427 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7428 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7429
7430 ...
7431 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7432
7433 ...
7434 ;; When done with the overlays:
7435 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7436 ;; Or respectively:
7437 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7438
7439 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7440
7441 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7442 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7443 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7444 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7445
7446 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7447 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7448 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7449
7450 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7451 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7452
7453 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7454 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7455
7456 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7457 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7458 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7459
7460 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7461 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7462 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7463 determine the syntax type of the character.
7464
7465 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7466 of the current buffer.
7467
7468 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7469 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7470 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7471
7472 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7473 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7474 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7475 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7476 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7477
7478 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7479 text property.
7480
7481 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7482 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7483 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7484
7485 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7486 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7487 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7488 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7489 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7490
7491 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7492 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7493 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7494
7495 ** Changes in face features
7496
7497 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7498 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7499
7500 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7501 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7502
7503 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7504 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7505
7506 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7507 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7508
7509 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7510 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7511 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7512 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7513 overlay property).
7514
7515 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7516 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7517
7518 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7519
7520 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7521 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7522 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7523 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7524
7525 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7526 begins with ~.
7527
7528 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7529 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7530
7531 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7532 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7533
7534 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7535 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7536
7537 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7538 character code conversion as well as other things.
7539
7540 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7541 (formerly it did not).
7542
7543 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7544 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7545
7546 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7547 instead of constant strings.
7548
7549 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7550 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7551 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7552
7553 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7554 in the same way as before.
7555
7556 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7557 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7558 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7559
7560 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7561 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7562 else, and returns nil.
7563
7564 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7565 directory cannot be listed.
7566
7567 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7568
7569 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7570 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7571 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7572 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7573 ways:
7574
7575 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7576 It is available through the history command M-n.
7577
7578 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7579 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7580 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7581 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7582 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7583
7584 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7585 argument in this way.
7586
7587 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7588 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7589 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7590
7591 ** Echo area features
7592
7593 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7594 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7595 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7596 after the echo area is cleared.
7597
7598 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7599 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7600
7601 ** Keyboard input features
7602
7603 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7604 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7605
7606 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7607 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7608 by keyboard macros.
7609
7610 ** Frame-related changes
7611
7612 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7613 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7614 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7615
7616 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7617 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7618 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7619
7620 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7621 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7622 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7623 in the selected frame.
7624
7625 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7626 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7627 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7628
7629 ** X Windows features
7630
7631 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7632 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7633 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7634
7635 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7636 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7637
7638 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7639 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7640 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7641
7642 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7643 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7644
7645 ** Subprocess features
7646
7647 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7648 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7649 automatically.
7650
7651 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7652 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7653
7654 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7655 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7656
7657 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7658 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7659
7660 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7661 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7662 goes after the other menu items.
7663
7664 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7665 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7666 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7667 are in use.
7668
7669 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7670 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7671
7672 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7673 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7674 form.
7675
7676 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7677 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7678 but its hook is still run.
7679
7680 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7681 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7682
7683 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7684 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7685 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7686
7687 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7688 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7689 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7690 warned.
7691
7692 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7693 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7694
7695 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7696 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7697 functions like display-time.
7698
7699 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7700 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7701
7702 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7703 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7704 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7705
7706 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7707 if there is an error in compilation.
7708
7709 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7710 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7711 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7712 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7713
7714 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7715 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7716 the *scratch* buffer.
7717
7718 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7719 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7720 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7721 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7722
7723 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7724 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7725 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7726
7727 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7728 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7729 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7730 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7731
7732 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7733 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7734 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7735
7736 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7737 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7738 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7739 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7740 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7741 files at all.
7742
7743 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7744 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7745 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7746 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7747
7748 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7749 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7750 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7751 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7752
7753 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7754
7755 ** imenu.el changes.
7756
7757 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7758 item from menu created by imenu.
7759
7760 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7761 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7762 select one of those items.
7763 \f
7764 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7765 \f
7766 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7767
7768 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7769 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7770
7771 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7772 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7773 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7774 \f
7775 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7776
7777 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7778 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7779
7780 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7781 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7782 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7783 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7784 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7785 all caps.
7786
7787 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7788 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7789
7790 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7791 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7792 as in previous Emacs versions.
7793
7794 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7795 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7796 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7797 frames.
7798
7799 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7800 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7801 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7802 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7803 accident.
7804
7805 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7806 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7807 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7808 line and then executing the macro.
7809
7810 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7811
7812 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7813 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7814 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7815 characters.
7816
7817 ** Font Lock mode
7818
7819 *** Font Lock support modes
7820
7821 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7822 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7823 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7824 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7825 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7826
7827 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7828
7829 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7830
7831 in your ~/.emacs.
7832
7833 *** lazy-lock
7834
7835 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7836 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7837 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7838 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7839 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7840 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7841 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7842
7843 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7844
7845 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7846
7847 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7848
7849 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7850
7851 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7852 paren and key.
7853
7854 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7855 supported.
7856
7857 ** Gnus changes.
7858
7859 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7860 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7861 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7862 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7863
7864 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7865 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7866
7867 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7868 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7869 obsolete.
7870
7871 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7872 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7873
7874 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7875
7876 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7877
7878 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7879
7880 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7881 referred.
7882
7883 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7884
7885 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7886
7887 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7888
7889 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7890
7891 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7892 buffers.
7893
7894 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7895
7896 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7897
7898 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7899
7900 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7901
7902 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7903
7904 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7905
7906 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7907
7908 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7909 is possible.
7910
7911 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7912
7913 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7914 groups of groups.
7915
7916 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7917
7918 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7919 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7920
7921 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7922
7923 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7924
7925 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7926
7927 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7928
7929 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7930 expiration times.
7931
7932 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7933
7934 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7935 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7936
7937 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7938 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7939 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7940
7941 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7942 articles with the `*' command.
7943
7944 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7945
7946 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7947
7948 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7949
7950 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7951
7952 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7953 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7954
7955 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7956 buffer.
7957
7958 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7959
7960 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7961
7962 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7963
7964 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7965
7966 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7967
7968 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7969
7970 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7971
7972 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7973
7974 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7975
7976 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7977 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7978
7979 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7980 refetching.
7981
7982 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7983
7984 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7985 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7986
7987 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7988
7989 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7990
7991 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7992
7993 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7994 articles.
7995
7996 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7997
7998 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7999
8000 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8001 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8002
8003 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8004
8005 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8006
8007 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8008
8009 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8010
8011 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8012
8013 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8014 in greater detail.
8015 \f
8016 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8017
8018 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8019 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8020 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8021 exists.
8022
8023 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8024 as well as lists.
8025
8026 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8027 of a given keymap.
8028
8029 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8030 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8031 keymap or nil.
8032
8033 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8034 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8035 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8036 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8037 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8038 alias.
8039 \f
8040 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8041
8042 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8043
8044 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8045 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8046 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8047 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8048 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8049
8050 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8051 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8052 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8053
8054 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8055
8056 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8057 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8058 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8059 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8060 chapter of the manual for details.
8061
8062 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8063 customization variables take effect.
8064
8065 ** Marking with the mouse.
8066
8067 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8068 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8069 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8070
8071 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8072
8073 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8074
8075 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8076 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8077
8078 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8079 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8080 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8081 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8082 applications, these problems are significant.
8083
8084 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8085 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8086 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8087 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8088 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8089
8090 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8091 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8092
8093 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8094 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8095 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8096 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8097 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8098 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8099
8100 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8101
8102 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8103 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8104 minibuffer contains.
8105
8106 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8107
8108 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8109 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8110 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8111 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8112
8113 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8114 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8115 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8116 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8117
8118 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8119 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8120
8121 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8122 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8123 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8124
8125 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8126 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8127 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8128 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8129
8130 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8131
8132 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8133 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8134
8135 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8136
8137 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8138 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8139 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8140 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8141 immediately after the selected one.
8142
8143 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8144 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8145
8146 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8147
8148 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8149 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8150 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8151 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8152 recover-session.
8153
8154 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8155 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8156 will not work.
8157
8158 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8159 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8160 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8161 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8162 now that the bug is fixed.
8163
8164 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8165
8166 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8167 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8168 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8169 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8170
8171 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8172 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8173 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8174 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8175
8176 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8177 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8178 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8179
8180 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8181 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8182 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8183 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8184 remain normal.
8185
8186 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8187 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8188
8189 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8190 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8191 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8192 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8193
8194 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8195 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8196 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8197 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8198 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8199 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8200
8201 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8202 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8203 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8204 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8205
8206 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8207 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8208 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8209
8210 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8211 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8212 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8213 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8214 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8215 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8216 to a limitation in font-lock).
8217
8218 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8219
8220 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8221 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8222 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8223 this example:
8224
8225 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8226 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8227
8228 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8229
8230 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8231
8232 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8233
8234 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8235
8236 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8237 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8238 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8239 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8240 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8241 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8242
8243 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8244 does the same job.
8245
8246 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8247 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8248
8249 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8250 text.
8251
8252 ** Font Lock mode
8253
8254 *** Global Font Lock mode
8255
8256 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8257 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8258 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8259 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8260 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8261
8262 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8263
8264 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8265
8266 in your ~/.emacs.
8267
8268 *** Local Refontification
8269
8270 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8271 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8272 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8273 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8274
8275 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8276 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8277 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8278 above and below point.
8279
8280 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8281
8282 ** Follow mode
8283
8284 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8285 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8286 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8287 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8288 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8289 follow-mode.
8290
8291 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8292
8293 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8294 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8295
8296 ** hide-show changes.
8297
8298 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8299 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8300 normal hooks.
8301
8302 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8303 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8304
8305 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8306 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8307 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8308
8309 ** MSDOS Changes
8310
8311 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8312 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8313
8314 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8315 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8316
8317 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8318
8319 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8320 pressing both mouse buttons.
8321
8322 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8323 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8324 are:
8325
8326 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8327 now works.
8328
8329 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8330
8331 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8332 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8333
8334 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8335
8336 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8337
8338 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8339
8340 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8341
8342 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8343 \f
8344 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8345
8346 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8347 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8348 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8349 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8350 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8351
8352 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8353
8354 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8355 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8356 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8357 be different.
8358
8359 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8360 than `system-type'.
8361
8362 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8363
8364 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8365 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8366
8367 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8368 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8369
8370 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8371 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8372 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8373
8374 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8375 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8376 like this:
8377
8378 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8379
8380 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8381 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8382 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8383
8384 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8385 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8386 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8387
8388 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8389 up if too much time passes.
8390
8391 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8392
8393 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8394 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8395 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8396 form in BODY.
8397
8398 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8399 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8400 call looks like this:
8401
8402 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8403
8404 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8405 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8406 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8407 ARGS.
8408
8409 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8410 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8411 command.
8412
8413 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8414 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8415 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8416 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8417
8418 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8419 idle for SECS seconds.
8420
8421 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8422 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8423 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8424 instead.
8425
8426 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8427 there is no answer within a certain time.
8428
8429 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8430
8431 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8432 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8433 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8434
8435 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8436 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8437 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8438 arguments in between are ignored.
8439
8440 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8441 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8442
8443 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8444 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8445 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8446 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8447 version.
8448
8449 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8450 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8451 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8452 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8453 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8454 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8455
8456 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8457 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8458 systems with limited file name syntax.
8459
8460 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8461 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8462 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8463 completions.el:
8464
8465 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8466 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8467 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8468
8469 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8470 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8471 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8472 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8473 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8474
8475 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8476 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8477 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8478
8479 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8480 marker from its buffer position.
8481
8482 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8483 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8484 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8485
8486 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8487 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8488 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8489 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8490 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8491 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8492
8493 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8494 errors that happen often during editing.
8495
8496 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8497 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8498 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8499
8500 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8501 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8502
8503 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8504 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8505 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8506 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8507 and not get-buffer-window.
8508
8509 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8510 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8511 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8512
8513 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8514 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8515 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8516 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8517 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8518 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8519 over and over for the same text.
8520
8521 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8522
8523 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8524 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8525
8526 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8527 ;; $HEADER: text $
8528
8529 in addition to the normal
8530
8531 ;; HEADER: text
8532
8533 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8534 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8535 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8536
8537
8538 \f
8539 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8540
8541 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8542 Copyright information:
8543
8544 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8545
8546 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8547 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8548 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8549 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8550
8551 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8552 of this document, or of portions of it,
8553 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8554 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8555 \f
8556 Local variables:
8557 mode: outline
8558 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
8559 end: