etc/NEWS

   1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
   2
   3 Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
   5
   6 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
   7 If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
   8
   9 This file is about changes in Emacs version 24.
  10
  11 See files NEWS.23, NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18,
  12 and NEWS.1-17 for changes in older Emacs versions.
  13
  14 You can narrow news to a specific version by calling `view-emacs-news'
  15 with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.
  16
  17
  18 Temporary note:
  19  +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
  20  --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
  21 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
  22 so we will look at it and add it to the manual.
  23
  24 \f
  25 * Installation Changes in Emacs 24.1
  26
  27 ---
  28 ** There are new configure options:
  29 --with-mmdf, --with-mail-unlink, --with-mailhost.
  30 These provide no new functionality, they just remove the need to edit
  31 lib-src/Makefile by hand in order to use the associated features.
  32
  33 ** Configure links against libselinux if it is found.
  34 You can disable this by using --without-selinux.
  35
  36 \f
  37 * Startup Changes in Emacs 24.1
  38
  39 \f
  40 * Changes in Emacs 24.1
  41
  42 ** auto-mode-case-fold is now enabled by default.
  43
  44 +++
  45 ** Emacs now supports display and editing of bidirectional text.
  46 Warning: This is still very much experimental!  The existing support
  47 is minimal, and when it's turned on (see below), many features are
  48 likely to give unexpected results, or break, or even crash!  Use at
  49 your own risk!
  50
  51 See the node "Bidirectional Editing" in the Emacs Manual for some
  52 initial documentation.
  53
  54 To turn this on in any given buffer, set the buffer-local variable
  55 `bidi-display-reordering' to a non-nil value.  The default is nil.
  56
  57 The buffer-local variable `bidi-paragraph-direction', if non-nil,
  58 forces each paragraph in the buffer to have its base direction
  59 according to the value of this variable.  Possible values are
  60 `right-to-left' and `left-to-right'.  If the value is nil (the
  61 default), Emacs determines the base direction of each paragraph from
  62 its text, as specified by the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm.
  63
  64 Reordering of bidirectional text for display in Emacs is a "Full
  65 bidirectionality" class implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional
  66 Algorithm.
  67
  68 ** GTK scroll-bars are now placed on the right by default.
  69 Use `set-scroll-bar-mode' to change this.
  70
  71 ** GTK tool bars can have just text, just images or images and text.
  72 Customize `tool-bar-style´ to choose style.  On a Gnome desktop, the default
  73 is taken from the desktop settings.
  74
  75 ** Lucid menus and dialogs can display antialiased fonts if Emacs is built
  76 with Xft.
  77
  78 ** Basic SELinux support has been added.
  79 This requires Emacs to be linked with libselinux at build time.
  80
  81 *** Emacs preserves the SELinux file context when backing up or copying files.
  82
  83 *** The new functions file-selinux-context and set-file-selinux-context
  84 get and set the SELinux context of a file.
  85
  86 ** New scrolling commands `scroll-up-command' and `scroll-down-command'
  87 (bound to C-v/[next] and M-v/[prior]) does not signal errors at top/bottom
  88 of buffer at first key-press (instead moves to top/bottom of buffer)
  89 when a new variable `scroll-error-top-bottom' is non-nil.
  90
  91 ** New scrolling commands `scroll-up-line' and `scroll-down-line'
  92 scroll a line instead of full screen.
  93
  94 ** New property `scroll-command' should be set on a command's symbol to
  95 define it as a scroll command affected by `scroll-preserve-screen-position.
  96
  97 \f
  98 * Editing Changes in Emacs 24.1
  99
 100 \f
 101 * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 24.1
 102
 103 ** Archive Mode has basic support to browse 7z archives.
 104
 105 ** partial-completion-mode is now obsolete.
 106 You can get the same behavior with
 107 (setq completion-styles '(partial-completion initials)).
 108
 109 ** mpc.el: Can use pseudo tags of the form tag1|tag2 as a union of two tags.
 110 ** Customize
 111
 112 *** Customize buffers now contain a search field.
 113 The search is performed using `customize-apropos'.
 114 To turn off the search field, set custom-search-field to nil .
 115
 116 *** Custom options now start out hidden if at their default values.
 117 Use the arrow to the left of the option name to toggle visibility.
 118
 119 *** custom-buffer-sort-alphabetically now defaults to t.
 120
 121 *** The color widget now has a "Choose" button, which allows you to
 122 choose a color via list-colors-display.
 123
 124 ** VC and related modes
 125
 126 *** New VC commands: vc-log-incoming, vc-log-outgoing, vc-find-conflicted-file.
 127
 128 *** vc-dir for Bzr supports viewing shelve contents and shelving snapshots.
 129
 130 *** Special markup can be added to log-edit buffers.
 131 The log-edit buffers are expected to have a format similar to email messages
 132 with headers of the form:
 133   Author: <author of this change>
 134   Summary: <one line summary of this change>
 135   Fixes: <reference to the bug fixed by this change>
 136 Some backends handle some of those headers specially, but any unknown header
 137 is just left as is in the message, so it is not lost.
 138
 139 ** Directory local variables can apply to file-less buffers.
 140 For example, adding "(diff-mode . ((mode . whitespace)))" to your
 141 .dir-locals.el file, will turn on `whitespace-mode' for *vc-diff*
 142 buffers.
 143
 144 ** s-region.el is now declared obsolete, superceded by shift-select-mode
 145 enabled by default in 23.1.
 146
 147 ** gdb-mi
 148
 149 *** GDB User Interface migrated to GDB Machine Interface and now
 150 supports multithread non-stop debugging and debugging of several
 151 threads simultaneously.
 152
 153 \f
 154 * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 24.1
 155
 156 ** secrets.el is an implementation of the Secret Service API, an
 157 interface to password managers like GNOME Keyring or KDE Wallet.  The
 158 Secret Service API requires D-Bus for communication.
 159
 160 \f
 161 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 24.1
 162
 163 ** Test for special mode-class was moved from view-file to view-buffer.
 164
 165 ** Passing a nil argument to a minor mode function now turns the mode
 166    ON unconditionally.
 167 \f
 168 * Lisp changes in Emacs 24.1
 169
 170 ** New completion style `substring'.
 171
 172 ** Image API
 173
 174 *** When the image type is one of listed in `image-animated-types'
 175 and the number of sub-images in the image is more than one, then the
 176 new function `create-animated-image' creates an animated image where
 177 sub-images are displayed successively with the duration defined by
 178 `image-animate-max-time' and the delay between sub-images defined
 179 by the Graphic Control Extension of the image.
 180
 181 *** `image-extension-data' is renamed to `image-metadata'.
 182
 183 ** Progress reporters can now "spin".
 184 The MIN-VALUE and MAX-VALUE arguments of `make-progress-reporter' can
 185 now be nil, or omitted.  This makes a "non-numeric" reporter.  Each
 186 time you call `progress-reporter-update' on that progress reporter,
 187 with a nil or omitted VALUE argument, the reporter message is
 188 displayed with a "spinning bar".
 189
 190 \f
 191 * Changes in Emacs 24.1 on non-free operating systems
 192
 193 \f
 194 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 195 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
 196
 197 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 198 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 199 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 200 (at your option) any later version.
 201
 202 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 203 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 204 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 205 GNU General Public License for more details.
 206
 207 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 208 along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 209
 210 \f
 211 Local variables:
 212 mode: outline
 213 paragraph-separate: "[  \f]*$"
 214 end: