etc/NEWS

   1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
   2
   3 Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
   5
   6 Please send Emacs bug reports to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org.
   7 If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
   8
   9 This file is about changes in Emacs version 23.
  10
  11 See files NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18, and NEWS.1-17
  12 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 Temporary note:
  18  +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
  19  --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
  20 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
  21 so we will look at it and add it to the manual.
  22
  23 \f
  24 * About external Lisp packages
  25
  26 \f
  27 * Installation Changes in Emacs 23.1
  28
  29 ** The default X toolkit is now Gtk+, rather than Lucid.
  30
  31 ** configure now checks for libgif before libungif when searching for
  32 a GIF library.
  33
  34 \f
  35 * Changes in Emacs 23.1
  36
  37 ** If you set find-file-confirm-nonexistent-file to t, then C-x C-f
  38 requires confirmation before opening a non-existent file.
  39
  40 ** If the gpm mouse server is running and t-mouse-mode enabled, Emacs uses a
  41 Unix socket in a GNU/Linux console to talk to server, rather than faking events
  42 using the client program mev.  This C level approach provides mouse
  43 highlighting, and help echoing in the minibuffer.
  44
  45 ** The new variable next-error-recenter specifies how next-error should
  46 recenter the visited source file.  Its value can be a number (for example,
  47 0 for top line, -1 for bottom line), or nil for no recentering.
  48
  49 ** The mode-line display a `@' if the default-directory for the current buffer
  50 is on a remote machine, or a hyphen otherwise.
  51 ** The new command balance-window-area balances windows both vertically
  52 and horizontally.
  53
  54 ** The new command close-display-connection can be used to close a connection
  55 to a remote display, e.g. because the display is about to become unreachable.
  56 \f
  57 * Startup Changes in Emacs 23.1
  58
  59 \f
  60 * Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1
  61
  62 \f
  63 * Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1
  64
  65 ** New command kill-matching-buffers kills buffers whose name matches a regexp.
  66
  67 ** Minibuffer changes:
  68
  69 *** isearch started in the minibuffer searches in the minibuffer history.
  70 Reverse isearch commands (C-r, C-M-r) search in previous minibuffer
  71 history elements, and forward isearch commands (C-s, C-M-s) search in
  72 next history elements.  When the reverse search reaches the first history
  73 element, it wraps to the last history element, and the forward search
  74 wraps to the first history element.  When the search is terminated, the
  75 history element containing the search string becomes the current.
  76
  77 \f
  78 * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1
  79
  80 ** minibuffer-indicate-depth-mode shows the minibuffer depth in the prompt.
  81
  82 \f
  83 * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1
  84
  85 ** compilation-auto-jump-to-first-error tells `compile' to jump to
  86 the first error encountered during compilations.
  87
  88 ** In the `copyright' package, you can specify your copyright holders's names.
  89 Only copyright lines with holders matching copyright-names-regexp will be
  90 considered for update.
  91
  92 ** VC
  93 *** Clicking on the VC mode-line entry now pops the VC menu.
  94
  95 *** The VC mode-line entry now has a tooltip.
  96
  97 *** VC backends can provide extra menu entries to be added to the "Version Control" menu.
  98 This can be used to add menu entries for backend specific functions.
  99
 100 ** sgml-electric-tag-pair-mode lets you simultaneously edit matched tag pairs.
 101
 102 ** BibTeX mode:
 103
 104 *** New `bibtex-entry-format' options `whitespace', `braces', and
 105 `string', disabled by default.
 106
 107 *** New variable `bibtex-cite-matcher-alist' contains rules to
 108 identify cited keys in BibTeX entries, used by `bibtex-find-crossref.
 109
 110 *** Command `bibtex-url' now allows multiple URLs per entry.
 111
 112 +++
 113 ** Tramp
 114
 115 *** New connection methods.
 116 The new methods "plinkx", "plink2", "psftp", "sftp" and "fish" have
 117 been introduced.  There are also new so-called gateway methods
 118 "tunnel" and "socks".
 119
 120 *** Multihop syntax has been removed.
 121 The pseudo-method "multi" has been removed.  Instead of, multi hops
 122 can be specified by the new variable `tramp-default-proxies-alist'.
 123
 124 *** More default settings.
 125 Default values can be set via the variables `tramp-default-user',
 126 `tramp-default-user-alist' and `tramp-default-host'.
 127
 128 *** Connection information is cached.
 129 In order to reduce connection setup, information about used
 130 connections are kept persistent in a file.  The name of this file is
 131 defined in the variable `tramp-persistency-file-name'.
 132
 133 *** Control of remote processes.
 134 Running processes on a remote host can be controlled by settings in
 135 `tramp-remote-path' and `tramp-remote-process-environment'.
 136
 137 *** Success of remote copy is checked.
 138 When the variable `file-precious-flag' is set, the success of a remote
 139 file copy is checked via the file's checksum.
 140
 141 ** Miscellaneous programming mode changes
 142
 143 *** The variable `fortran-line-length' can change the fixed-form line-length.
 144
 145 ** Miscellaneous
 146
 147 *** comint-mode uses `start-file-process' now (see Lisp Changes).
 148 If `default-directory' is a remote file name, subprocesses are started
 149 on the corresponding remote system.
 150
 151 *** C-x C-q in dired-mode now runs the command wdired-change-to-wdired-mode,
 152 and C-x C-q in wdired-mode exits it with asking a question about
 153 saving changes.
 154
 155 \f
 156 * Changes in Emacs 23.1 on non-free operating systems
 157
 158 ---
 159 ** IPv6 is supported on MS-Windows.
 160 Emacs now supports IPv6 on Windows XP and later, and earlier versions
 161 of Windows with third party IPv6 stacks installed. Previously IPv6 was
 162 supported on other platforms, but not on Windows due to using the winsock
 163 1.1 header file, even though Emacs was linking to the winsock 2 library.
 164
 165 \f
 166 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1
 167
 168 +++
 169 ** The function `dired-call-process' has been removed.
 170
 171 \f
 172 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1
 173
 174 ** Non-breaking space now acts as whitespace.
 175
 176 +++
 177 ** In `condition-case', a handler can specify "let the debugger run first".
 178
 179 You do this by writing `debug' in the list of conditions to be handled,
 180 like this:
 181
 182     (condition-case nil
 183         (foo bar)
 184       ((debug error) nil))
 185
 186 ** The `require-match' argument to `completing-read' accepts a new value
 187 `confirm-only'.
 188
 189 +++
 190 ** The regexp form \(?<num>:<regexp>\) specifies the group number explicitly.
 191
 192 +++
 193 ** New variable `user-emacs-directory'.
 194 Use this instead of "~/.emacs.d".
 195
 196 +++
 197 ** The new function `start-file-process is similar to `start-process',
 198 but obeys file handlers.  The file handler is chosen based on
 199 `default-directory'.  The functions `start-file-process-shell-command'
 200 and `process-file-shell-command' are also new; they call internally
 201 `start-file-process and `process-file', respectively.
 202
 203 +++
 204 ** `file-remote-p' has new optional parameters IDENTIFICATION and CONNECTED.
 205 IDENTIFICATION specifies which part of the remote identifier has to be
 206 returned.  With CONNECTED passed non-nil, it is checked whether a
 207 remote connection has been established already.
 208
 209 ** The two new functions `looking-at-p' and `string-match-p' can do
 210 the same matching as `looking-at' and `string-match' without changing
 211 the match data.
 212
 213 ** The interactive-form of a function can be added post-facto via the
 214 `interactive-form' symbol property.  Mostly useful to add complex interactive
 215 forms to subroutines.
 216 \f
 217 * New Packages for Lisp Programming in Emacs 23.1
 218
 219 \f
 220 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 221 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
 222
 223 GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 224 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 225 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
 226 any later version.
 227
 228 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 229 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 230 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 231 GNU General Public License for more details.
 232
 233 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 234 along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the
 235 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
 236 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
 237
 238 \f
 239 Local variables:
 240 mode: outline
 241 paragraph-separate: "[  \f]*$"
 242 end:
 243
 244 arch-tag: e759449d-88b3-4de4-9900-3a6c3dfa23e2