1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2003-05-21
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
7 For older news, see the file ONEWS
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9 `view-emacs-news' with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.
12 +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
13 --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
14 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
15 so we will look at it and add it to the manual.
17 Fixme: The notes about Emacs 23 are quite incomplete.
20 * Changes in Emacs 23.1
22 ** The Emacs character set is now a superset of Unicode.
23 (It has about four times the code space, which should be plenty).
25 The internal encoding used for buffers and strings is now
26 Unicode-based and called `utf-8-emacs'. utf-8-emacs is backwards
27 compatible with the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode. The `emacs-mule'
28 coding system can still read and write data in the old internal
31 There are still charsets which contain disjoint sets of characters
32 where this is necessary or useful, especially for various Far Eastern
33 sets which are problematic with Unicode.
35 Since the internal encoding is also used by default for byte-compiled
36 files -- i.e. the normal coding system for byte-compiled Lisp files is
37 now utf-8-Emacs -- Lisp containing non-ASCII characters which is
38 compiled by Emacs 23 can't be read by earlier versions of Emacs. Files
39 compiled by Emacs 20, 21, or 22 are loaded correctly as emacs-mule
40 (whether or not they contain multibyte characters), which makes loading
41 them somewhat slower than Emacs 23-compiled files. Thus it may be worth
42 recompiling existing .elc files which don't need to be shared with older
45 ** There are assorted new coding systems/aliases -- see
46 M-x list-coding-systems.
48 ** New charset implementation with many new charsets.
49 See M-x list-character-sets. New charsets can be defined conveniently
50 as tables of unicodes.
52 The dimension of a charset is now 0, 1, 2, or 3, and the size of each
53 dimension is no longer limited to 94 or 96.
55 Generic characters no longer exist.
57 A dynamic charset priority list is used to infer the charset of
58 unicodes for display &c.
60 ** The following facilities are obsolete:
62 Minor modes: unify-8859-on-encoding-mode, unify-8859-on-decoding-mode
65 * Lisp changes in Emacs 23.1
67 map-char-table's behaviour has changed.
69 New functions: characterp, max-char, map-charset-chars,
70 define-charset-alias, primary-charset, set-primary-charset,
71 unify-charset, clear-charset-maps, charset-priority-list,
72 set-charset-priority, define-coding-system,
73 define-coding-system-alias, coding-system-aliases, langinfo,
76 Changed functions: copy-sequence, decode-char, encode-char,
77 set-fontset-font, new-fontset, modify-syntax-entry, define-charset,
80 Obsoleted: char-bytes, chars-in-region, set-coding-priority,
84 * Incompatible Lisp changes
86 Deleted functions: make-coding-system, register-char-codings,
89 ** The character codes for characters from the
90 eight-bit-control/eight-bit-graphic charsets aren't now in the range
93 * Installation Changes in Emacs 22.1
96 ** Emacs now supports new configure options `--program-prefix',
97 `--program-suffix' and `--program-transform-name' that affect the names of
101 ** Emacs can now be built without sound support.
104 ** You can build Emacs with Gtk+ widgets by specifying `--with-x-toolkit=gtk'
105 when you run configure. This requires Gtk+ 2.0 or newer. This port
106 provides a way to display multilingual text in menus (with some caveats).
109 ** The `emacsserver' program has been removed, replaced with Lisp code.
112 ** By default, Emacs now uses a setgid helper program to update game
113 scores. The directory ${localstatedir}/games/emacs is the normal
114 place for game scores to be stored. You can control this with the
115 configure option `--with-game-dir'. The specific user that Emacs uses
116 to own the game scores is controlled by `--with-game-user'. If access
117 to a game user is not available, then scores will be stored separately
118 in each user's home directory.
121 ** Leim is now part of the Emacs distribution.
122 You no longer need to download a separate tarball in order to build
126 ** The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is now part of the distribution.
128 The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual in Info format is built as part of the
129 Emacs build procedure and installed together with the Emacs User
130 Manual. A menu item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy
131 accessible (Help->More Manuals->Emacs Lisp Reference).
134 ** The Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp manual is now part of
137 This manual is now part of the standard distribution and is installed,
138 together with the Emacs User Manual, into the Info directory. A menu
139 item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy accessible
140 (Help->More Manuals->Introduction to Emacs Lisp).
143 ** New translations of the Emacs Tutorial are available in the
144 following languages: Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese (both
145 with simplified and traditional characters), French, and Italian.
146 Type `C-u C-h t' to choose one of them in case your language setup
147 doesn't automatically select the right one.
150 ** A French translation of the `Emacs Survival Guide' is available.
153 ** Emacs now includes support for loading image libraries on demand.
154 (Currently this feature is only used on MS Windows.) You can configure
155 the supported image types and their associated dynamic libraries by
156 setting the variable `image-library-alist'.
159 ** Support for Cygwin was added.
162 ** Support for FreeBSD/Alpha has been added.
165 ** Support for GNU/Linux systems on S390 machines was added.
168 ** Support for MacOS X was added.
169 See the files mac/README and mac/INSTALL for build instructions.
172 ** Support for GNU/Linux systems on X86-64 machines was added.
175 ** Mac OS 9 port now uses the Carbon API by default. You can also
176 create non-Carbon build by specifying `NonCarbon' as a target. See
177 the files mac/README and mac/INSTALL for build instructions.
180 ** Building with -DENABLE_CHECKING does not automatically build with union
181 types any more. Add -DUSE_LISP_UNION_TYPE if you want union types.
184 ** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
185 much pure storage it will approximately need.
187 ** The script etc/emacs-buffer.gdb can be used with gdb to retrieve the
188 contents of buffers from a core dump and save them to files easily, should
192 ** The Emacs terminal emulation in term.el uses a different terminfo name.
193 The Emacs terminal emulation in term.el now uses "eterm-color" as its
194 terminfo name, since term.el now supports color.
197 * Startup Changes in Emacs 22.1
200 ** New command line option -Q or --quick.
201 This is like using -q --no-site-file, but in addition it also disables
202 the fancy startup screen.
205 ** New command line option -D or --basic-display.
206 Disables the menu-bar, the tool-bar, the scroll-bars, tool tips, and
210 ** New command line option -nbc or --no-blinking-cursor disables
211 the blinking cursor on graphical terminals.
214 ** The option --script FILE runs Emacs in batch mode and loads FILE.
215 It is useful for writing Emacs Lisp shell script files, because they
216 can start with this line:
218 #!/usr/bin/emacs --script
221 ** The option --directory DIR now modifies `load-path' immediately.
222 Directories are added to the front of `load-path' in the order they
223 appear on the command line. For example, with this command line:
225 emacs -batch -L .. -L /tmp --eval "(require 'foo)"
227 Emacs looks for library `foo' in the parent directory, then in /tmp, then
228 in the other directories in `load-path'. (-L is short for --directory.)
231 ** The command line option --no-windows has been changed to
232 --no-window-system. The old one still works, but is deprecated.
235 ** The -f option, used from the command line to call a function,
236 now reads arguments for the function interactively if it is
237 an interactively callable function.
240 ** When you specify a frame size with --geometry, the size applies to
241 all frames you create. A position specified with --geometry only
242 affects the initial frame.
245 ** Emacs can now be invoked in full-screen mode on a windowed display.
246 When Emacs is invoked on a window system, the new command-line options
247 `--fullwidth', `--fullheight', and `--fullscreen' produce a frame
248 whose width, height, or both width and height take up the entire
249 screen size. (For now, this does not work with some window managers.)
252 ** Emacs now displays a splash screen by default even if command-line
253 arguments were given. The new command-line option --no-splash
254 disables the splash screen; see also the variable
255 `inhibit-startup-message' (which is also aliased as
256 `inhibit-splash-screen').
259 ** The default is now to use an bitmap as the icon, so the command-line options
260 --icon-type, -i has been replaced with options --no-bitmap-icon, -nbi to turn
264 ** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'.
265 When loading many files, for instance with `emacs *', Emacs normally
266 displays a buffer menu. This option turns the buffer menu off.
270 You can now put the init files .emacs and .emacs_SHELL under
271 ~/.emacs.d or directly under ~. Emacs will find them in either place.
274 ** Emacs now reads the standard abbrevs file ~/.abbrev_defs
275 automatically at startup, if it exists. When Emacs offers to save
276 modified buffers, it saves the abbrevs too if they have changed. It
277 can do this either silently or asking for confirmation first,
278 according to the value of `save-abbrevs'.
280 * Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 22.1
283 ** M-g is now a prefix key.
284 M-g g and M-g M-g run goto-line.
285 M-g n and M-g M-n run next-error (like C-x `).
286 M-g p and M-g M-p run previous-error.
289 ** C-u M-g M-g switches to the most recent previous buffer,
290 and goes to the specified line in that buffer.
292 When goto-line starts to execute, if there's a number in the buffer at
293 point then it acts as the default argument for the minibuffer.
296 ** The old bindings C-M-delete and C-M-backspace have been deleted,
297 since there are situations where one or the other will shut down
298 the operating system or your X server.
301 ** line-move-ignore-invisible now defaults to t.
304 ** When the undo information of the current command gets really large
305 (beyond the value of `undo-outer-limit'), Emacs discards it and warns
309 ** `apply-macro-to-region-lines' now operates on all lines that begin
310 in the region, rather than on all complete lines in the region.
313 ** A prefix argument is no longer required to repeat a jump to a
314 previous mark, i.e. C-u C-SPC C-SPC C-SPC ... cycles through the
315 mark ring. Use C-u C-u C-SPC to set the mark immediately after a jump.
318 ** The info-search bindings on C-h C-f, C-h C-k and C-h C-i
319 have been moved to C-h F, C-h K and C-h S.
322 ** In incremental search, C-w is changed. M-%, C-M-w and C-M-y are special.
324 See below under "incremental search changes".
327 ** C-x C-f RET, typing nothing in the minibuffer, is no longer a special case.
329 Since the default input is the current directory, this has the effect
330 of specifying the current directory. Normally that means to visit the
331 directory with Dired.
334 ** The completion commands TAB, SPC and ? in the minibuffer apply only
335 to the text before point. If there is text in the buffer after point,
336 it remains unchanged.
339 ** M-o now is the prefix key for setting text properties;
340 M-o M-o requests refontification.
343 ** You can now follow links by clicking Mouse-1 on the link.
345 See below for more details.
348 ** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now
349 control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded
350 by whitespace. This means you can now use them as shell wildcards
351 too. If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the
352 doublequotes make no difference in the shell, but they prevent
353 special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'.
355 * Editing Changes in Emacs 22.1
358 ** The max size of buffers and integers has been doubled.
359 On 32bit machines, it is now 256M (i.e. 268435455).
362 ** M-g is now a prefix key.
363 M-g g and M-g M-g run goto-line.
364 M-g n and M-g M-n run next-error (like C-x `).
365 M-g p and M-g M-p run previous-error.
368 ** C-u M-g M-g switches to the most recent previous buffer,
369 and goes to the specified line in that buffer.
371 When goto-line starts to execute, if there's a number in the buffer at
372 point then it acts as the default argument for the minibuffer.
375 ** The old bindings C-M-delete and C-M-backspace have been deleted,
376 since there are situations where one or the other will shut down
377 the operating system or your X server.
380 ** line-move-ignore-invisible now defaults to t.
383 ** When the undo information of the current command gets really large
384 (beyond the value of `undo-outer-limit'), Emacs discards it and warns
388 ** `apply-macro-to-region-lines' now operates on all lines that begin
389 in the region, rather than on all complete lines in the region.
392 ** You can now switch buffers in a cyclic order with C-x C-left and
393 (prev-buffer) and C-x C-right (next-buffer). C-x left and C-x right
397 ** `undo-only' does an undo which does not redo any previous undo.
400 ** M-SPC (just-one-space) when given a numeric argument N
401 converts whitespace around point to N spaces.
404 ** New commands to operate on pairs of open and close characters:
405 `insert-pair', `delete-pair', `raise-sexp'.
408 ** New command `kill-whole-line' kills an entire line at once.
409 By default, it is bound to C-S-<backspace>.
412 ** Yanking text now discards certain text properties that can
413 be inconvenient when you did not expect them. The variable
414 `yank-excluded-properties' specifies which ones. Insertion
415 of register contents and rectangles also discards these properties.
418 ** The default values of paragraph-start and indent-line-function have
419 been changed to reflect those used in Text mode rather than those used
420 in Indented-Text mode.
423 ** M-x setenv now expands environment variable references.
425 Substrings of the form `$foo' and `${foo}' in the specified new value
426 now refer to the value of environment variable foo. To include a `$'
427 in the value, use `$$'.
430 ** `special-display-buffer-names' and `special-display-regexps' now
431 understand two new boolean pseudo-frame-parameters `same-frame' and
435 ** The default for the paper size (variable ps-paper-type) is taken
438 ** The command `list-faces-display' now accepts a prefix arg.
439 When passed, the function prompts for a regular expression and lists
440 only faces matching this regexp.
442 ** Mark command changes:
445 *** A prefix argument is no longer required to repeat a jump to a
446 previous mark, i.e. C-u C-SPC C-SPC C-SPC ... cycles through the
447 mark ring. Use C-u C-u C-SPC to set the mark immediately after a jump.
450 *** Marking commands extend the region when invoked multiple times.
452 If you type C-M-SPC (mark-sexp), M-@ (mark-word), M-h
453 (mark-paragraph), or C-M-h (mark-defun) repeatedly, the marked region
454 extends each time, so you can mark the next two sexps with M-C-SPC
455 M-C-SPC, for example. This feature also works for
456 mark-end-of-sentence, if you bind that to a key. It also extends the
457 region when the mark is active in Transient Mark mode, regardless of
458 the last command. To start a new region with one of marking commands
459 in Transient Mark mode, you can deactivate the active region with C-g,
460 or set the new mark with C-SPC.
463 *** M-h (mark-paragraph) now accepts a prefix arg.
465 With positive arg, M-h marks the current and the following paragraphs;
466 if the arg is negative, it marks the current and the preceding
470 *** Some commands do something special in Transient Mark mode when the
471 mark is active--for instance, they limit their operation to the
472 region. Even if you don't normally use Transient Mark mode, you might
473 want to get this behavior from a particular command. There are two
474 ways you can enable Transient Mark mode and activate the mark, for one
477 One method is to type C-SPC C-SPC; this enables Transient Mark mode
478 and sets the mark at point. The other method is to type C-u C-x C-x.
479 This enables Transient Mark mode temporarily but does not alter the
482 After these commands, Transient Mark mode remains enabled until you
483 deactivate the mark. That typically happens when you type a command
484 that alters the buffer, but you can also deactivate the mark by typing
488 *** Movement commands `beginning-of-buffer', `end-of-buffer',
489 `beginning-of-defun', `end-of-defun' do not set the mark if the mark
490 is already active in Transient Mark mode.
492 ** Help command changes:
495 *** Changes in C-h bindings:
497 C-h e displays the *Messages* buffer.
499 C-h followed by a control character is used for displaying files
502 C-h C-f displays the FAQ.
503 C-h C-e displays the PROBLEMS file.
505 The info-search bindings on C-h C-f, C-h C-k and C-h C-i
506 have been moved to C-h F, C-h K and C-h S.
508 C-h c, C-h k, C-h w, and C-h f now handle remapped interactive commands.
510 - C-h c and C-h k report the actual command (after possible remapping)
511 run by the key sequence.
513 - C-h w and C-h f on a command which has been remapped now report the
514 command it is remapped to, and the keys which can be used to run
517 For example, if C-k is bound to kill-line, and kill-line is remapped
518 to new-kill-line, these commands now report:
520 - C-h c and C-h k C-k reports:
521 C-k runs the command new-kill-line
523 - C-h w and C-h f kill-line reports:
524 kill-line is remapped to new-kill-line which is on C-k, <deleteline>
526 - C-h w and C-h f new-kill-line reports:
527 new-kill-line is on C-k
530 *** Help commands `describe-function' and `describe-key' now show function
531 arguments in lowercase italics on displays that support it. To change the
532 default, customize face `help-argument-name' or redefine the function
533 `help-default-arg-highlight'.
536 *** C-h v and C-h f commands now include a hyperlink to the C source for
537 variables and functions defined in C (if the C source is available).
540 *** Help mode now only makes hyperlinks for faces when the face name is
541 preceded or followed by the word `face'. It no longer makes
542 hyperlinks for variables without variable documentation, unless
543 preceded by one of the words `variable' or `option'. It now makes
544 hyperlinks to Info anchors (or nodes) if the anchor (or node) name is
545 enclosed in single quotes and preceded by `info anchor' or `Info
546 anchor' (in addition to earlier `info node' and `Info node').
549 *** The new command `describe-char' (C-u C-x =) pops up a buffer with
550 description various information about a character, including its
551 encodings and syntax, its text properties, how to input, overlays, and
552 widgets at point. You can get more information about some of them, by
553 clicking on mouse-sensitive areas or moving there and pressing RET.
556 *** The command `list-text-properties-at' has been deleted because
557 C-u C-x = gives the same information and more.
560 *** New command `display-local-help' displays any local help at point
561 in the echo area. It is bound to `C-h .'. It normally displays the
562 same string that would be displayed on mouse-over using the
563 `help-echo' property, but, in certain cases, it can display a more
564 keyboard oriented alternative.
567 *** New user option `help-at-pt-display-when-idle' allows to
568 automatically show the help provided by `display-local-help' on
569 point-over, after suitable idle time. The amount of idle time is
570 determined by the user option `help-at-pt-timer-delay' and defaults
571 to one second. This feature is turned off by default.
574 *** The apropos commands now accept a list of words to match.
575 When more than one word is specified, at least two of those words must
576 be present for an item to match. Regular expression matching is still
580 *** The new option `apropos-sort-by-scores' causes the matching items
581 to be sorted according to their score. The score for an item is a
582 number calculated to indicate how well the item matches the words or
583 regular expression that you entered to the apropos command. The best
584 match is listed first, and the calculated score is shown for each
587 ** Incremental Search changes:
590 *** Vertical scrolling is now possible within incremental search.
591 To enable this feature, customize the new user option
592 `isearch-allow-scroll'. User written commands which satisfy stringent
593 constraints can be marked as "scrolling commands". See the Emacs manual
597 *** C-w in incremental search now grabs either a character or a word,
598 making the decision in a heuristic way. This new job is done by the
599 command `isearch-yank-word-or-char'. To restore the old behavior,
600 bind C-w to `isearch-yank-word' in `isearch-mode-map'.
603 *** C-y in incremental search now grabs the next line if point is already
604 at the end of a line.
607 *** C-M-w deletes and C-M-y grabs a character in isearch mode.
608 Another method to grab a character is to enter the minibuffer by `M-e'
609 and to type `C-f' at the end of the search string in the minibuffer.
612 *** M-% typed in isearch mode invokes `query-replace' or
613 `query-replace-regexp' (depending on search mode) with the current
614 search string used as the string to replace.
617 *** Isearch no longer adds `isearch-resume' commands to the command
618 history by default. To enable this feature, customize the new
619 user option `isearch-resume-in-command-history'.
621 ** Replace command changes:
624 *** New user option `query-replace-skip-read-only': when non-nil,
625 `query-replace' and related functions simply ignore
626 a match if part of it has a read-only property.
629 *** When used interactively, the commands `query-replace-regexp' and
630 `replace-regexp' allow \,expr to be used in a replacement string,
631 where expr is an arbitrary Lisp expression evaluated at replacement
632 time. In many cases, this will be more convenient than using
633 `query-replace-regexp-eval'. `\#' in a replacement string now refers
634 to the count of replacements already made by the replacement command.
635 All regular expression replacement commands now allow `\?' in the
636 replacement string to specify a position where the replacement string
637 can be edited for each replacement.
640 *** query-replace uses isearch lazy highlighting when the new user option
641 `query-replace-lazy-highlight' is non-nil.
644 *** The current match in query-replace is highlighted in new face
645 `query-replace' which by default inherits from isearch face.
647 ** File operation changes:
650 *** Unquoted `$' in file names do not signal an error any more when
651 the corresponding environment variable does not exist.
652 Instead, the `$ENVVAR' text is left as is, so that `$$' quoting
653 is only rarely needed.
656 *** In processing a local variables list, Emacs strips the prefix and
657 suffix are from every line before processing all the lines.
660 *** find-file-read-only visits multiple files in read-only mode,
661 when the file name contains wildcard characters.
664 *** find-alternate-file replaces the current file with multiple files,
665 when the file name contains wildcard characters.
668 *** Auto Compression mode is now enabled by default.
671 *** C-x C-f RET, typing nothing in the minibuffer, is no longer a special case.
673 Since the default input is the current directory, this has the effect
674 of specifying the current directory. Normally that means to visit the
675 directory with Dired.
678 *** When you are root, and you visit a file whose modes specify
679 read-only, the Emacs buffer is now read-only too. Type C-x C-q if you
680 want to make the buffer writable. (As root, you can in fact alter the
684 *** C-x s (save-some-buffers) now offers an option `d' to diff a buffer
685 against its file, so you can see what changes you would be saving.
688 *** The commands copy-file, rename-file, make-symbolic-link and
689 add-name-to-file, when given a directory as the "new name" argument,
690 convert it to a file name by merging in the within-directory part of
691 the existing file's name. (This is the same convention that shell
692 commands cp, mv, and ln follow.) Thus, M-x copy-file RET ~/foo RET
693 /tmp RET copies ~/foo to /tmp/foo.
696 *** When used interactively, `format-write-file' now asks for confirmation
697 before overwriting an existing file, unless a prefix argument is
698 supplied. This behavior is analogous to `write-file'.
701 *** The variable `auto-save-file-name-transforms' now has a third element that
702 controls whether or not the function `make-auto-save-file-name' will
703 attempt to construct a unique auto-save name (e.g. for remote files).
706 *** The new option `write-region-inhibit-fsync' disables calls to fsync
707 in `write-region'. This can be useful on laptops to avoid spinning up
708 the hard drive upon each file save. Enabling this variable may result
709 in data loss, use with care.
712 *** If the user visits a file larger than `large-file-warning-threshold',
713 Emacs asks for confirmation.
716 *** require-final-newline now has two new possible values:
718 `visit' means add a newline (as an undoable change) if it's needed
719 when visiting the file.
721 `visit-save' means add a newline (as an undoable change) if it's
722 needed when visiting the file, and also add a newline if it's needed
723 when saving the file.
726 *** The new option mode-require-final-newline controls how certain
727 major modes enable require-final-newline. Any major mode that's
728 designed for a kind of file that should normally end in a newline
729 sets require-final-newline based on mode-require-final-newline.
730 So you can customize mode-require-final-newline to control what these
733 ** Minibuffer changes:
736 *** There's a new face `minibuffer-prompt'.
737 Emacs adds this face to the list of text properties stored in the
738 variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', which is used to display the
742 *** Enhanced visual feedback in `*Completions*' buffer.
744 Completions lists use faces to highlight what all completions
745 have in common and where they begin to differ.
747 The common prefix shared by all possible completions uses the face
748 `completions-common-part', while the first character that isn't the
749 same uses the face `completions-first-difference'. By default,
750 `completions-common-part' inherits from `default', and
751 `completions-first-difference' inherits from `bold'. The idea of
752 `completions-common-part' is that you can use it to make the common
753 parts less visible than normal, so that the rest of the differing
754 parts is, by contrast, slightly highlighted.
756 Above fontification is always done when listing completions is
757 triggered at minibuffer. If you want to fontify completions whose
758 listing is triggered at the other normal buffer, you have to pass
759 the common prefix of completions to `display-completion-list' as
763 *** File-name completion can now ignore specified directories.
764 If an element of the list in `completion-ignored-extensions' ends in a
765 slash `/', it indicates a subdirectory that should be ignored when
766 completing file names. Elements of `completion-ignored-extensions'
767 which do not end in a slash are never considered when a completion
768 candidate is a directory.
771 *** The completion commands TAB, SPC and ? in the minibuffer apply only
772 to the text before point. If there is text in the buffer after point,
773 it remains unchanged.
776 *** New user option `history-delete-duplicates'.
777 If set to t when adding a new history element, all previous identical
778 elements are deleted.
780 ** Redisplay changes:
783 *** The mode line position information now comes before the major mode.
784 When the file is maintained under version control, that information
785 appears between the position information and the major mode.
788 *** New face `escape-glyph' highlights control characters and escape glyphs.
791 *** Non-breaking space and hyphens are now displayed with a special
792 face, either nobreak-space or escape-glyph. You can turn this off or
793 specify a different mode by setting the variable `nobreak-char-display'.
796 *** The parameters of automatic hscrolling can now be customized.
797 The variable `hscroll-margin' determines how many columns away from
798 the window edge point is allowed to get before automatic hscrolling
799 will horizontally scroll the window. The default value is 5.
801 The variable `hscroll-step' determines how many columns automatic
802 hscrolling scrolls the window when point gets too close to the
803 window edge. If its value is zero, the default, Emacs scrolls the
804 window so as to center point. If its value is an integer, it says how
805 many columns to scroll. If the value is a floating-point number, it
806 gives the fraction of the window's width to scroll the window.
808 The variable `automatic-hscrolling' was renamed to
809 `auto-hscroll-mode'. The old name is still available as an alias.
812 *** Moving or scrolling through images (and other lines) taller that
813 the window now works sensibly, by automatically adjusting the window's
817 *** The new face `mode-line-inactive' is used to display the mode line
818 of non-selected windows. The `mode-line' face is now used to display
819 the mode line of the currently selected window.
821 The new variable `mode-line-in-non-selected-windows' controls whether
822 the `mode-line-inactive' face is used.
825 *** You can now customize the use of window fringes. To control this
826 for all frames, use M-x fringe-mode or the Show/Hide submenu of the
827 top-level Options menu, or customize the `fringe-mode' variable. To
828 control this for a specific frame, use the command M-x
832 *** Angle icons in the fringes can indicate the buffer boundaries. In
833 addition, up and down arrow bitmaps in the fringe indicate which ways
834 the window can be scrolled.
836 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
837 `indicate-buffer-boundaries' to a non-nil value. The default value of
838 this variable is found in `default-indicate-buffer-boundaries'.
840 If value is `left' or `right', both angle and arrow bitmaps are
841 displayed in the left or right fringe, resp.
843 The value can also be an alist which specifies the presence and
844 position of each bitmap individually.
846 For example, ((top . left) (t . right)) places the top angle bitmap
847 in left fringe, the bottom angle bitmap in right fringe, and both
848 arrow bitmaps in right fringe. To show just the angle bitmaps in the
849 left fringe, but no arrow bitmaps, use ((top . left) (bottom . left)).
852 *** On window systems, lines which are exactly as wide as the window
853 (not counting the final newline character) are no longer broken into
854 two lines on the display (with just the newline on the second line).
855 Instead, the newline now "overflows" into the right fringe, and the
856 cursor will be displayed in the fringe when positioned on that newline.
858 The new user option 'overflow-newline-into-fringe' can be set to nil to
859 revert to the old behavior of continuing such lines.
862 *** When a window has display margin areas, the fringes are now
863 displayed between the margins and the buffer's text area, rather than
864 outside those margins.
867 *** A window can now have individual fringe and scroll-bar settings,
868 in addition to the individual display margin settings.
870 Such individual settings are now preserved when windows are split
871 horizontally or vertically, a saved window configuration is restored,
872 or when the frame is resized.
874 ** Cursor display changes:
877 *** On X, MS Windows, and Mac OS, the blinking cursor's "off" state is
878 now controlled by the variable `blink-cursor-alist'.
881 *** The X resource cursorBlink can be used to turn off cursor blinking.
884 *** Emacs can produce an underscore-like (horizontal bar) cursor.
885 The underscore cursor is set by putting `(cursor-type . hbar)' in
886 default-frame-alist. It supports variable heights, like the `bar'
890 *** Display of hollow cursors now obeys the buffer-local value (if any)
891 of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' in the buffer that the cursor
895 *** The variable `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' can now be set to any
896 of the recognized cursor types.
901 *** `mode-line-highlight' is the standard face indicating mouse sensitive
902 elements on mode-line (and header-line) like `highlight' face on text
906 *** `shadow' face defines the appearance of the "shadowed" text, i.e.
907 the text which should be less noticeable than the surrounding text.
908 This can be achieved by using shades of grey in contrast with either
909 black or white default foreground color. This generic shadow face
910 allows customization of the appearance of shadowed text in one place,
911 so package-specific faces can inherit from it.
914 *** `vertical-border' face is used for the vertical divider between windows.
916 ** Font-Lock changes:
919 *** M-o now is the prefix key for setting text properties;
920 M-o M-o requests refontification.
923 *** All modes now support using M-x font-lock-mode to toggle
924 fontification, even those such as Occur, Info, and comint-derived
925 modes that do their own fontification in a special way.
927 The variable `Info-fontify' is no longer applicable; to disable
928 fontification in Info, remove `turn-on-font-lock' from
932 *** font-lock-lines-before specifies a number of lines before the
933 current line that should be refontified when you change the buffer.
934 The default value is 1.
937 *** font-lock: in modes like C and Lisp where the fontification assumes that
938 an open-paren in column 0 is always outside of any string or comment,
939 font-lock now highlights any such open-paren-in-column-zero in bold-red
940 if it is inside a string or a comment, to indicate that it can cause
941 trouble with fontification and/or indentation.
944 *** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-preprocessor-face'.
947 *** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-comment-delimiter-face'.
950 *** Easy to overlook single character negation can now be font-locked.
951 You can use the new variable `font-lock-negation-char-face' and the face of
952 the same name to customize this. Currently the cc-modes, sh-script-mode,
953 cperl-mode and make-mode support this.
956 *** The default settings for JIT stealth lock parameters are changed.
957 The default value for the user option jit-lock-stealth-time is now 16
958 instead of 3, and the default value of jit-lock-stealth-nice is now
959 0.5 instead of 0.125. The new defaults should lower the CPU usage
960 when Emacs is fontifying in the background.
963 *** jit-lock can now be delayed with `jit-lock-defer-time'.
965 If this variable is non-nil, its value should be the amount of Emacs
966 idle time in seconds to wait before starting fontification. For
967 example, if you set `jit-lock-defer-time' to 0.25, fontification will
968 only happen after 0.25s of idle time.
971 *** contextual refontification is now separate from stealth fontification.
973 jit-lock-defer-contextually is renamed jit-lock-contextually and
974 jit-lock-context-time determines the delay after which contextual
975 refontification takes place.
980 *** A menu item "Show/Hide" was added to the top-level menu "Options".
981 This menu allows you to turn various display features on and off (such
982 as the fringes, the tool bar, the speedbar, and the menu bar itself).
983 You can also move the vertical scroll bar to either side here or turn
984 it off completely. There is also a menu-item to toggle displaying of
985 current date and time, current line and column number in the mode-line.
988 *** Speedbar has moved from the "Tools" top level menu to "Show/Hide".
991 *** You can exit dialog windows and menus by typing C-g.
994 *** The menu item "Open File..." has been split into two items, "New File..."
995 and "Open File...". "Open File..." now opens only existing files. This is
996 to support existing GUI file selection dialogs better.
999 *** The file selection dialog for Gtk+, Mac, W32 and Motif/Lesstif can be
1000 disabled by customizing the variable `use-file-dialog'.
1003 *** The pop up menus for Lucid now stay up if you do a fast click and can
1004 be navigated with the arrow keys (like Gtk+, Mac and W32).
1007 *** The Lucid menus can display multilingual text in your locale. You have
1008 to explicitly specify a fontSet resource for this to work, for example
1009 `-xrm "Emacs*fontSet: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*,*"'.
1012 *** Dialogs for Lucid/Athena and Lesstif/Motif now pops down when pressing
1013 ESC, like they do for Gtk+, Mac and W32.
1016 *** For Gtk+ version 2.4, you can make Emacs use the old file dialog
1017 by setting the variable `x-use-old-gtk-file-dialog' to t. Default is to use
1023 *** If you set the new variable `mouse-autoselect-window' to a non-nil
1024 value, windows are automatically selected as you move the mouse from
1025 one Emacs window to another, even within a frame. A minibuffer window
1026 can be selected only when it is active.
1029 *** On X, when the window manager requires that you click on a frame to
1030 select it (give it focus), the selected window and cursor position
1031 normally changes according to the mouse click position. If you set
1032 the variable x-mouse-click-focus-ignore-position to t, the selected
1033 window and cursor position do not change when you click on a frame
1037 *** You can now follow links by clicking Mouse-1 on the link.
1039 Traditionally, Emacs uses a Mouse-1 click to set point and a Mouse-2
1040 click to follow a link, whereas most other applications use a Mouse-1
1041 click for both purposes, depending on whether you click outside or
1042 inside a link. Now the behavior of a Mouse-1 click has been changed
1043 to match this context-sentitive dual behavior. (If you prefer the old
1044 behavior, set the user option `mouse-1-click-follows-link' to nil.)
1046 Depending on the current mode, a Mouse-2 click in Emacs can do much
1047 more than just follow a link, so the new Mouse-1 behavior is only
1048 activated for modes which explicitly mark a clickable text as a "link"
1049 (see the new function `mouse-on-link-p' for details). The Lisp
1050 packages that are included in release 22.1 have been adapted to do
1051 this, but external packages may not yet support this. However, there
1052 is no risk in using such packages, as the worst thing that could
1053 happen is that you get the original Mouse-1 behavior when you click
1054 on a link, which typically means that you set point where you click.
1056 If you want to get the original Mouse-1 action also inside a link, you
1057 just need to press the Mouse-1 button a little longer than a normal
1058 click (i.e. press and hold the Mouse-1 button for half a second before
1061 Dragging the Mouse-1 inside a link still performs the original
1062 drag-mouse-1 action, typically copy the text.
1064 You can customize the new Mouse-1 behavior via the new user options
1065 `mouse-1-click-follows-link' and `mouse-1-click-in-non-selected-windows'.
1068 *** Emacs normally highlights mouse sensitive text whenever the mouse
1069 is over the text. By setting the new variable `mouse-highlight', you
1070 can optionally enable mouse highlighting only after you move the
1071 mouse, so that highlighting disappears when you press a key. You can
1072 also disable mouse highlighting.
1075 *** You can now customize if selecting a region by dragging the mouse
1076 shall not copy the selected text to the kill-ring by setting the new
1077 variable mouse-drag-copy-region to nil.
1080 *** mouse-wheels can now scroll a specific fraction of the window
1081 (rather than a fixed number of lines) and the scrolling is `progressive'.
1084 *** Emacs ignores mouse-2 clicks while the mouse wheel is being moved.
1086 People tend to push the mouse wheel (which counts as a mouse-2 click)
1087 unintentionally while turning the wheel, so these clicks are now
1088 ignored. You can customize this with the mouse-wheel-click-event and
1089 mouse-wheel-inhibit-click-time variables.
1092 *** Under X, mouse-wheel-mode is turned on by default.
1094 ** Multilingual Environment (Mule) changes:
1097 *** Language environment and various default coding systems are setup
1098 more correctly according to the current locale name. If the locale
1099 name doesn't specify a charset, the default is what glibc defines.
1100 This change can result in using the different coding systems as
1101 default in some locale (e.g. vi_VN).
1104 *** The keyboard-coding-system is now automatically set based on your
1105 current locale settings if you are not using a window system. This
1106 can mean that the META key doesn't work but generates non-ASCII
1107 characters instead, depending on how the terminal (or terminal
1108 emulator) works. Use `set-keyboard-coding-system' (or customize
1109 keyboard-coding-system) if you prefer META to work (the old default)
1110 or if the locale doesn't describe the character set actually generated
1111 by the keyboard. See Info node `Single-Byte Character Support'.
1114 *** The new command `revert-buffer-with-coding-system' (C-x RET r)
1115 revisits the current file using a coding system that you specify.
1118 *** New command `recode-region' decodes the region again by a specified
1122 *** The new command `recode-file-name' changes the encoding of the name
1126 *** New command `ucs-insert' inserts a character specified by its
1130 *** The new command `set-file-name-coding-system' (C-x RET F) sets
1131 coding system for encoding and decoding file names. A new menu item
1132 (Options->Mule->Set Coding Systems->For File Name) invokes this
1136 *** New command quail-show-key shows what key (or key sequence) to type
1137 in the current input method to input a character at point.
1140 *** Limited support for character `unification' has been added.
1141 Emacs now knows how to translate between different representations of
1142 the same characters in various Emacs charsets according to standard
1143 Unicode mappings. This applies mainly to characters in the ISO 8859
1144 sets plus some other 8-bit sets, but can be extended. For instance,
1145 translation works amongst the Emacs ...-iso8859-... charsets and the
1146 mule-unicode-... ones.
1148 By default this translation happens automatically on encoding.
1149 Self-inserting characters are translated to make the input conformant
1150 with the encoding of the buffer in which it's being used, where
1153 You can force a more complete unification with the user option
1154 unify-8859-on-decoding-mode. That maps all the Latin-N character sets
1155 into Unicode characters (from the latin-iso8859-1 and
1156 mule-unicode-0100-24ff charsets) on decoding. Note that this mode
1157 will often effectively clobber data with an iso-2022 encoding.
1160 *** There is support for decoding Greek and Cyrillic characters into
1161 either Unicode (the mule-unicode charsets) or the iso-8859 charsets,
1162 when possible. The latter are more space-efficient. This is
1163 controlled by user option utf-fragment-on-decoding.
1166 *** New language environments: French, Ukrainian, Tajik,
1167 Bulgarian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, UTF-8, Windows-1255, Welsh, Latin-6,
1168 Latin-7, Lithuanian, Latvian, Swedish, Slovenian, Croatian, Georgian,
1169 Italian, Russian, Malayalam, Tamil, Russian, Chinese-EUC-TW. (Set up
1170 automatically according to the locale.)
1173 *** New input methods: latin-alt-postfix, latin-postfix, latin-prefix,
1174 ukrainian-computer, belarusian, bulgarian-bds, russian-computer,
1175 vietnamese-telex, lithuanian-numeric, lithuanian-keyboard,
1176 latvian-keyboard, welsh, georgian, rfc1345, ucs, sgml,
1177 bulgarian-phonetic, dutch, slovenian, croatian, malayalam-inscript,
1181 *** New input method chinese-sisheng for inputting Chinese Pinyin
1185 *** Improved Thai support. A new minor mode `thai-word-mode' (which is
1186 automatically activated if you select Thai as a language
1187 environment) changes key bindings of most word-oriented commands to
1188 versions which recognize Thai words. Affected commands are
1192 M-DEL (backward-kill-word)
1193 M-t (transpose-words)
1194 M-q (fill-paragraph)
1197 *** Indian support has been updated.
1198 The in-is13194 coding system is now Unicode-based. CDAC fonts are
1199 assumed. There is a framework for supporting various
1200 Indian scripts, but currently only Devanagari, Malayalam and Tamil are
1204 *** A UTF-7 coding system is available in the library `utf-7'.
1207 *** The utf-8/16 coding systems have been enhanced.
1208 By default, untranslatable utf-8 sequences are simply composed into
1209 single quasi-characters. User option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' (it is
1210 turned on by default) arranges to translate many utf-8 CJK character
1211 sequences into real Emacs characters in a similar way to the Mule-UCS
1212 system. As this loads a fairly big data on demand, people who are not
1213 interested in CJK characters may want to customize it to nil.
1214 You can augment/amend the CJK translation via hash tables
1215 `ucs-mule-cjk-to-unicode' and `ucs-unicode-to-mule-cjk'. The utf-8
1216 coding system now also encodes characters from most of Emacs's
1217 one-dimensional internal charsets, specifically the ISO-8859 ones.
1218 The utf-16 coding system is affected similarly.
1221 *** A new coding system `euc-tw' has been added for traditional Chinese
1222 in CNS encoding; it accepts both Big 5 and CNS as input; on saving,
1223 Big 5 is then converted to CNS.
1226 *** Many new coding systems are available in the `code-pages' library.
1227 These include complete versions of most of those in codepage.el, based
1228 on Unicode mappings. `codepage-setup' is now obsolete and is used
1229 only in the MS-DOS port of Emacs. All coding systems defined in
1230 `code-pages' are auto-loaded.
1233 *** New variable `utf-translate-cjk-unicode-range' controls which
1234 Unicode characters to translate in `utf-translate-cjk-mode'.
1237 *** iso-10646-1 (`Unicode') fonts can be used to display any range of
1238 characters encodable by the utf-8 coding system. Just specify the
1239 fontset appropriately.
1241 ** Customize changes:
1244 *** Custom themes are collections of customize options. Create a
1245 custom theme with M-x customize-create-theme. Use M-x load-theme to
1246 load and enable a theme, and M-x disable-theme to disable it. Use M-x
1247 enable-theme to renable a disabled theme.
1250 *** The commands M-x customize-face and M-x customize-face-other-window
1251 now look at the character after point. If a face or faces are
1252 specified for that character, the commands by default customize those
1256 *** The face-customization widget has been reworked to be less confusing.
1257 In particular, when you enable a face attribute using the corresponding
1258 check-box, there's no longer a redundant `*' option in value selection
1259 for that attribute; the values you can choose are only those which make
1260 sense for the attribute. When an attribute is de-selected by unchecking
1261 its check-box, then the (now ignored, but still present temporarily in
1262 case you re-select the attribute) value is hidden.
1265 *** When you set or reset a variable's value in a Customize buffer,
1266 the previous value becomes the "backup value" of the variable.
1267 You can go back to that backup value by selecting "Use Backup Value"
1268 under the "[State]" button.
1270 ** Buffer Menu changes:
1273 *** New command `Buffer-menu-toggle-files-only' toggles display of file
1274 buffers only in the Buffer Menu. It is bound to `T' in Buffer Menu
1278 *** `buffer-menu' and `list-buffers' now list buffers whose names begin
1279 with a space, when those buffers are visiting files. Normally buffers
1280 whose names begin with space are omitted.
1283 *** The new options `buffers-menu-show-directories' and
1284 `buffers-menu-show-status' let you control how buffers are displayed
1285 in the menu dropped down when you click "Buffers" from the menu bar.
1287 `buffers-menu-show-directories' controls whether the menu displays
1288 leading directories as part of the file name visited by the buffer.
1289 If its value is `unless-uniquify', the default, directories are
1290 shown unless uniquify-buffer-name-style' is non-nil. The value of nil
1291 and t turn the display of directories off and on, respectively.
1293 `buffers-menu-show-status' controls whether the Buffers menu includes
1294 the modified and read-only status of the buffers. By default it is
1295 t, and the status is shown.
1297 Setting these variables directly does not take effect until next time
1298 the Buffers menu is regenerated.
1303 *** New faces dired-header, dired-mark, dired-marked, dired-flagged,
1304 dired-ignored, dired-directory, dired-symlink, dired-warning
1305 introduced for Dired mode instead of font-lock faces.
1308 *** New Dired command `dired-compare-directories' marks files
1309 with different file attributes in two dired buffers.
1312 *** New Dired command `dired-do-touch' (bound to T) changes timestamps
1313 of marked files with the value entered in the minibuffer.
1316 *** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now
1317 control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded
1318 by whitespace. This means you can now use them as shell wildcards
1319 too. If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the
1320 doublequotes make no difference in the shell, but they prevent
1321 special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'.
1324 *** In Dired, the w command now copies the current line's file name
1325 into the kill ring. With a zero prefix arg, copies absolute file names.
1328 *** In Dired-x, Omitting files is now a minor mode, dired-omit-mode.
1330 The mode toggling command is bound to M-o. A new command
1331 dired-mark-omitted, bound to * O, marks omitted files. The variable
1332 dired-omit-files-p is obsoleted, use the mode toggling function
1336 *** The variables dired-free-space-program and dired-free-space-args
1337 have been renamed to directory-free-space-program and
1338 directory-free-space-args, and they now apply whenever Emacs puts a
1339 directory listing into a buffer.
1344 *** The comint prompt can now be made read-only, using the new user
1345 option `comint-prompt-read-only'. This is not enabled by default,
1346 except in IELM buffers. The read-only status of IELM prompts can be
1347 controlled with the new user option `ielm-prompt-read-only', which
1348 overrides `comint-prompt-read-only'.
1350 The new commands `comint-kill-whole-line' and `comint-kill-region'
1351 support editing comint buffers with read-only prompts.
1353 `comint-kill-whole-line' is like `kill-whole-line', but ignores both
1354 read-only and field properties. Hence, it always kill entire
1355 lines, including any prompts.
1357 `comint-kill-region' is like `kill-region', except that it ignores
1358 read-only properties, if it is safe to do so. This means that if any
1359 part of a prompt is deleted, then the entire prompt must be deleted
1360 and that all prompts must stay at the beginning of a line. If this is
1361 not the case, then `comint-kill-region' behaves just like
1362 `kill-region' if read-only are involved: it copies the text to the
1363 kill-ring, but does not delete it.
1366 *** The new command `comint-insert-previous-argument' in comint-derived
1367 modes (shell-mode etc) inserts arguments from previous command lines,
1368 like bash's `ESC .' binding. It is bound by default to `C-c .', but
1369 otherwise behaves quite similarly to the bash version.
1372 *** `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' has been renamed
1373 `comint-use-prompt-regexp'. The old name has been kept as an alias,
1374 but declared obsolete.
1376 ** M-x Compile changes:
1379 *** M-x compile has become more robust and reliable
1381 Quite a few more kinds of messages are recognized. Messages that are
1382 recognized as warnings or informational come in orange or green, instead of
1383 red. Informational messages are by default skipped with `next-error'
1384 (controlled by `compilation-skip-threshold').
1386 Location data is collected on the fly as the *compilation* buffer changes.
1387 This means you could modify messages to make them point to different files.
1388 This also means you can not go to locations of messages you may have deleted.
1390 The variable `compilation-error-regexp-alist' has now become customizable. If
1391 you had added your own regexps to this, you'll probably need to include a
1392 leading `^', otherwise they'll match anywhere on a line. There is now also a
1393 `compilation-mode-font-lock-keywords' and it nicely handles all the checks
1394 that configure outputs and -o options so you see at a glance where you are.
1396 The new file etc/compilation.txt gives examples of each type of message.
1399 *** New user option `compilation-environment'.
1400 This option allows you to specify environment variables for inferior
1401 compilation processes without affecting the environment that all
1402 subprocesses inherit.
1405 *** New user option `compilation-disable-input'.
1406 If this is non-nil, send end-of-file as compilation process input.
1409 *** New options `next-error-highlight' and `next-error-highlight-no-select'
1410 specify the method of highlighting of the corresponding source line
1411 in new face `next-error'.
1414 *** A new minor mode `next-error-follow-minor-mode' can be used in
1415 compilation-mode, grep-mode, occur-mode, and diff-mode (i.e. all the
1416 modes that can use `next-error'). In this mode, cursor motion in the
1417 buffer causes automatic display in another window of the corresponding
1418 matches, compilation errors, etc. This minor mode can be toggled with
1422 *** When the left fringe is displayed, an arrow points to current message in
1423 the compilation buffer.
1426 *** The new variable `compilation-context-lines' controls lines of leading
1427 context before the current message. If nil and the left fringe is displayed,
1428 it doesn't scroll the compilation output window. If there is no left fringe,
1429 no arrow is displayed and a value of nil means display the message at the top
1432 ** Occur mode changes:
1435 *** In the *Occur* buffer, `o' switches to it in another window, and
1436 C-o displays the current line's occurrence in another window without
1440 *** You can now use next-error (C-x `) and previous-error to advance to
1441 the next/previous matching line found by M-x occur.
1444 *** The new command `multi-occur' is just like `occur', except it can
1445 search multiple buffers. There is also a new command
1446 `multi-occur-by-filename-regexp' which allows you to specify the
1447 buffers to search by their filename. Internally, Occur mode has been
1448 rewritten, and now uses font-lock, among other changes.
1453 *** Grep has been decoupled from compilation mode setup.
1455 There's a new separate package grep.el, with its own submenu and
1456 customization group.
1459 *** M-x grep provides highlighting support.
1461 Hits are fontified in green, and hits in binary files in orange. Grep buffers
1462 can be saved and automatically revisited.
1465 *** `grep-find' is now also available under the name `find-grep' where
1466 people knowing `find-grep-dired' would probably expect it.
1469 *** The new variables `grep-window-height', `grep-auto-highlight', and
1470 `grep-scroll-output' override the corresponding compilation mode
1471 settings, for grep commands only.
1474 *** New option `grep-highlight-matches' highlightes matches in *grep*
1475 buffer. It uses a special feature of some grep programs which accept
1476 --color option to output markers around matches. When going to the next
1477 match with `next-error' the exact match is highlighted in the source
1478 buffer. Otherwise, if `grep-highlight-matches' is nil, the whole
1479 source line is highlighted.
1482 *** New key bindings in grep output window:
1483 SPC and DEL scrolls window up and down. C-n and C-p moves to next and
1484 previous match in the grep window. RET jumps to the source line of
1485 the current match. `n' and `p' shows next and previous match in
1486 other window, but does not switch buffer. `{' and `}' jumps to the
1487 previous or next file in the grep output. TAB also jumps to the next
1491 *** M-x grep now tries to avoid appending `/dev/null' to the command line
1492 by using GNU grep `-H' option instead. M-x grep automatically
1493 detects whether this is possible or not the first time it is invoked.
1494 When `-H' is used, the grep command line supplied by the user is passed
1495 unchanged to the system to execute, which allows more complicated
1496 command lines to be used than was possible before.
1498 ** X Windows Support:
1501 *** Emacs now supports drag and drop for X. Dropping a file on a window
1502 opens it, dropping text inserts the text. Dropping a file on a dired
1503 buffer copies or moves the file to that directory.
1506 *** Under X11, it is possible to swap Alt and Meta (and Super and Hyper).
1507 The new variables `x-alt-keysym', `x-hyper-keysym', `x-meta-keysym',
1508 and `x-super-keysym' can be used to choose which keysyms Emacs should
1509 use for the modifiers. For example, the following two lines swap
1511 (setq x-alt-keysym 'meta)
1512 (setq x-meta-keysym 'alt)
1515 *** The X resource useXIM can be used to turn off use of XIM, which can
1516 speed up Emacs with slow networking to the X server.
1518 If the configure option `--without-xim' was used to turn off use of
1519 XIM by default, the X resource useXIM can be used to turn it on.
1522 *** The new variable `x-select-request-type' controls how Emacs
1523 requests X selection. The default value is nil, which means that
1524 Emacs requests X selection with types COMPOUND_TEXT and UTF8_STRING,
1525 and use the more appropriately result.
1528 *** The scrollbar under LessTif or Motif has a smoother drag-scrolling.
1529 On the other hand, the size of the thumb does not represent the actual
1530 amount of text shown any more (only a crude approximation of it).
1535 *** Emacs now responds to mouse-clicks on the mode-line, header-line and
1536 display margin, when run in an xterm.
1539 *** Improved key bindings support when running in an xterm.
1540 When emacs is running in an xterm more key bindings are available. The
1541 following should work:
1542 {C,S,C-S,A}-{right,left,up,down,prior,next,delete,insert,F1-12}.
1543 These key bindings work on xterm from X.org 6.8, they might not work on
1544 some older versions of xterm, or on some proprietary versions.
1546 ** Character terminal color support changes:
1549 *** The new command-line option --color=MODE lets you specify a standard
1550 mode for a tty color support. It is meant to be used on character
1551 terminals whose capabilities are not set correctly in the terminal
1552 database, or with terminal emulators which support colors, but don't
1553 set the TERM environment variable to a name of a color-capable
1554 terminal. "emacs --color" uses the same color commands as GNU `ls'
1555 when invoked with "ls --color", so if your terminal can support colors
1556 in "ls --color", it will support "emacs --color" as well. See the
1557 user manual for the possible values of the MODE parameter.
1560 *** Emacs now supports several character terminals which provide more
1561 than 8 colors. For example, for `xterm', 16-color, 88-color, and
1562 256-color modes are supported. Emacs automatically notes at startup
1563 the extended number of colors, and defines the appropriate entries for
1564 all of these colors.
1567 *** Emacs now uses the full range of available colors for the default
1568 faces when running on a color terminal, including 16-, 88-, and
1569 256-color xterms. This means that when you run "emacs -nw" on an
1570 88-color or 256-color xterm, you will see essentially the same face
1574 *** There's a new support for colors on `rxvt' terminal emulator.
1576 * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 22.1
1578 ** Rcirc is now part of the Emacs distribution.
1580 Rcirc is an Internet relay chat (IRC) client. It supports
1581 simultaneous connections to multiple IRC servers. Each discussion
1582 takes place in its own buffer. For each connection you can join
1583 several channels (many-to-many) and participate in private
1584 (one-to-one) chats. Both channel and private chats are contained in
1587 To start an IRC session, type M-x irc, and follow the prompts for
1588 server, port, nick and initial channels.
1591 ** Newsticker is now part of the Emacs distribution.
1593 Newsticker asynchronously retrieves headlines (RSS) from a list of news
1594 sites, prepares these headlines for reading, and allows for loading the
1595 corresponding articles in a web browser. Its documentation is in a
1599 ** savehist saves minibuffer histories between sessions.
1602 ** Filesets are collections of files. You can define a fileset in
1603 various ways, such as based on a directory tree or based on
1604 program files that include other program files.
1606 Once you have defined a fileset, you can perform various operations on
1607 all the files in it, such as visiting them or searching and replacing
1611 ** Calc is now part of the Emacs distribution.
1613 Calc is an advanced desk calculator and mathematical tool written in
1614 Emacs Lisp. Its documentation is in a separate manual; within Emacs,
1615 type "C-h i m calc RET" to read that manual. A reference card is
1616 available in `etc/calccard.tex' and `etc/calccard.ps'.
1619 ** The new package ibuffer provides a powerful, completely
1620 customizable replacement for buff-menu.el.
1623 ** Ido mode is now part of the Emacs distribution.
1625 The ido (interactively do) package is an extension of the iswitchb
1626 package to do interactive opening of files and directories in addition
1627 to interactive buffer switching. Ido is a superset of iswitchb (with
1628 a few exceptions), so don't enable both packages.
1631 ** Image files are normally visited in Image mode, which lets you toggle
1632 between viewing the image and viewing the text using C-c C-c.
1635 ** CUA mode is now part of the Emacs distribution.
1637 The new cua package provides CUA-like keybindings using C-x for
1638 cut (kill), C-c for copy, C-v for paste (yank), and C-z for undo.
1639 With cua, the region can be set and extended using shifted movement
1640 keys (like pc-selection-mode) and typed text replaces the active
1641 region (like delete-selection-mode). Do not enable these modes with
1642 cua-mode. Customize the variable `cua-mode' to enable cua.
1644 In addition, cua provides unified rectangle support with visible
1645 rectangle highlighting: Use C-return to start a rectangle, extend it
1646 using the movement commands (or mouse-3), and cut or copy it using C-x
1647 or C-c (using C-w and M-w also works).
1649 Use M-o and M-c to `open' or `close' the rectangle, use M-b or M-f, to
1650 fill it with blanks or another character, use M-u or M-l to upcase or
1651 downcase the rectangle, use M-i to increment the numbers in the
1652 rectangle, use M-n to fill the rectangle with a numeric sequence (such
1653 as 10 20 30...), use M-r to replace a regexp in the rectangle, and use
1654 M-' or M-/ to restrict command on the rectangle to a subset of the
1655 rows. See the commentary in cua-base.el for more rectangle commands.
1657 Cua also provides unified support for registers: Use a numeric
1658 prefix argument between 0 and 9, i.e. M-0 .. M-9, for C-x, C-c, and
1659 C-v to cut or copy into register 0-9, or paste from register 0-9.
1661 The last text deleted (not killed) is automatically stored in
1662 register 0. This includes text deleted by typing text.
1664 Finally, cua provides a global mark which is set using S-C-space.
1665 When the global mark is active, any text which is cut or copied is
1666 automatically inserted at the global mark position. See the
1667 commentary in cua-base.el for more global mark related commands.
1669 The features of cua also works with the standard emacs bindings for
1670 kill, copy, yank, and undo. If you want to use cua mode, but don't
1671 want the C-x, C-c, C-v, and C-z bindings, you can customize the
1672 `cua-enable-cua-keys' variable.
1674 Note: This version of cua mode is not backwards compatible with older
1675 versions of cua.el and cua-mode.el. To ensure proper operation, you
1676 must remove older versions of cua.el or cua-mode.el as well as the
1677 loading and customization of those packages from the .emacs file.
1680 ** Org mode is now part of the Emacs distribution
1682 Org mode is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining ToDo lists, and
1683 doing project planning with a fast and effective plain-text system.
1684 It also contains a plain-text table editor with spreadsheet-like
1687 The Org mode table editor can be integrated into any major mode by
1688 activating the minor Orgtbl-mode.
1690 The documentation for org-mode is in a separate manual; within Emacs,
1691 type "C-h i m org RET" to read that manual. A reference card is
1692 available in `etc/orgcard.tex' and `etc/orgcard.ps'.
1695 ** The new package dns-mode.el add syntax highlight of DNS master files.
1696 The key binding C-c C-s (`dns-mode-soa-increment-serial') can be used
1697 to increment the SOA serial.
1700 ** The new global minor mode `file-name-shadow-mode' modifies the way
1701 filenames being entered by the user in the minibuffer are displayed, so
1702 that it's clear when part of the entered filename will be ignored due to
1703 emacs' filename parsing rules. The ignored portion can be made dim,
1704 invisible, or otherwise less visually noticable. The display method can
1705 be displayed by customizing the variable `file-name-shadow-properties'.
1708 ** The new package flymake.el does on-the-fly syntax checking of program
1709 source files. See the Flymake's Info manual for more details.
1712 ** The new keypad setup package provides several common bindings for
1713 the numeric keypad which is available on most keyboards. The numeric
1714 keypad typically has the digits 0 to 9, a decimal point, keys marked
1715 +, -, /, and *, an Enter key, and a NumLock toggle key. The keypad
1716 package only controls the use of the digit and decimal keys.
1718 By customizing the variables `keypad-setup', `keypad-shifted-setup',
1719 `keypad-numlock-setup', and `keypad-numlock-shifted-setup', or by
1720 using the function `keypad-setup', you can rebind all digit keys and
1721 the decimal key of the keypad in one step for each of the four
1722 possible combinations of the Shift key state (not pressed/pressed) and
1723 the NumLock toggle state (off/on).
1725 The choices for the keypad keys in each of the above states are:
1726 `Plain numeric keypad' where the keys generates plain digits,
1727 `Numeric keypad with decimal key' where the character produced by the
1728 decimal key can be customized individually (for internationalization),
1729 `Numeric Prefix Arg' where the keypad keys produce numeric prefix args
1730 for emacs editing commands, `Cursor keys' and `Shifted Cursor keys'
1731 where the keys work like (shifted) arrow keys, home/end, etc., and
1732 `Unspecified/User-defined' where the keypad keys (kp-0, kp-1, etc.)
1733 are left unspecified and can be bound individually through the global
1737 ** The new kmacro package provides a simpler user interface to
1738 emacs' keyboard macro facilities.
1740 Basically, it uses two function keys (default F3 and F4) like this:
1741 F3 starts a macro, F4 ends the macro, and pressing F4 again executes
1742 the last macro. While defining the macro, F3 inserts a counter value
1743 which automatically increments every time the macro is executed.
1745 There is now a keyboard macro ring which stores the most recently
1748 The C-x C-k sequence is now a prefix for the kmacro keymap which
1749 defines bindings for moving through the keyboard macro ring,
1750 C-x C-k C-p and C-x C-k C-n, editing the last macro C-x C-k C-e,
1751 manipulating the macro counter and format via C-x C-k C-c,
1752 C-x C-k C-a, and C-x C-k C-f. See the commentary in kmacro.el
1755 The normal macro bindings C-x (, C-x ), and C-x e now interfaces to
1756 the keyboard macro ring.
1758 The C-x e command now automatically terminates the current macro
1759 before calling it, if used while defining a macro.
1761 In addition, when ending or calling a macro with C-x e, the macro can
1762 be repeated immediately by typing just the `e'. You can customize
1763 this behavior via the variables kmacro-call-repeat-key and
1764 kmacro-call-repeat-with-arg.
1766 Keyboard macros can now be debugged and edited interactively.
1767 C-x C-k SPC steps through the last keyboard macro one key sequence
1768 at a time, prompting for the actions to take.
1771 ** New minor mode, Visible mode, toggles invisibility in the current buffer.
1772 When enabled, it makes all invisible text visible. When disabled, it
1773 restores the previous value of `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
1776 ** The wdired.el package allows you to use normal editing commands on Dired
1777 buffers to change filenames, permissions, etc...
1780 ** The new package longlines.el provides a minor mode for editing text
1781 files composed of long lines, based on the `use-hard-newlines'
1782 mechanism. The long lines are broken up by inserting soft newlines,
1783 which are automatically removed when saving the file to disk or
1784 copying into the kill ring, clipboard, etc. By default, Longlines
1785 mode inserts soft newlines automatically during editing, a behavior
1786 referred to as "soft word wrap" in other text editors. This is
1787 similar to Refill mode, but more reliable. To turn the word wrap
1788 feature off, set `longlines-auto-wrap' to nil.
1791 ** The printing package is now part of the Emacs distribution.
1793 If you enable the printing package by including (require 'printing) in
1794 the .emacs file, the normal Print item on the File menu is replaced
1795 with a Print sub-menu which allows you to preview output through
1796 ghostview, use ghostscript to print (if you don't have a PostScript
1797 printer) or send directly to printer a PostScript code generated by
1798 `ps-print' package. Use M-x pr-help for more information.
1801 ** The minor mode Reveal mode makes text visible on the fly as you
1802 move your cursor into hidden regions of the buffer.
1803 It should work with any package that uses overlays to hide parts
1804 of a buffer, such as outline-minor-mode, hs-minor-mode, hide-ifdef-mode, ...
1806 There is also Global Reveal mode which affects all buffers.
1809 ** The ruler-mode.el library provides a minor mode for displaying an
1810 "active" ruler in the header line. You can use the mouse to visually
1811 change the `fill-column', `window-margins' and `tab-stop-list'
1815 ** SES mode (ses-mode) is a new major mode for creating and editing
1816 spreadsheet files. Besides the usual Emacs features (intuitive command
1817 letters, undo, cell formulas in Lisp, plaintext files, etc.) it also offers
1818 viral immunity and import/export of tab-separated values.
1821 ** The new global minor mode `size-indication-mode' (off by default)
1822 shows the size of accessible part of the buffer on the mode line.
1825 ** The new package table.el implements editable, WYSIWYG, embedded
1826 `text tables' in Emacs buffers. It simulates the effect of putting
1827 these tables in a special major mode. The package emulates WYSIWYG
1828 table editing available in modern word processors. The package also
1829 can generate a table source in typesetting and markup languages such
1830 as latex and html from the visually laid out text table.
1833 ** The thumbs.el package allows you to preview image files as thumbnails
1834 and can be invoked from a Dired buffer.
1837 ** Tramp is now part of the distribution.
1839 This package is similar to Ange-FTP: it allows you to edit remote
1840 files. But whereas Ange-FTP uses FTP to access the remote host,
1841 Tramp uses a shell connection. The shell connection is always used
1842 for filename completion and directory listings and suchlike, but for
1843 the actual file transfer, you can choose between the so-called
1844 `inline' methods (which transfer the files through the shell
1845 connection using base64 or uu encoding) and the `out-of-band' methods
1846 (which invoke an external copying program such as `rcp' or `scp' or
1847 `rsync' to do the copying).
1849 Shell connections can be acquired via `rsh', `ssh', `telnet' and also
1850 `su' and `sudo'. Ange-FTP is still supported via the `ftp' method.
1852 If you want to disable Tramp you should set
1854 (setq tramp-default-method "ftp")
1857 ** The URL package (which had been part of W3) is now part of Emacs.
1860 ** `cfengine-mode' is a major mode for editing GNU Cfengine
1861 configuration files.
1864 ** The new package conf-mode.el handles thousands of configuration files, with
1865 varying syntaxes for comments (;, #, //, /* */ or !), assignment (var = value,
1866 var : value, var value or keyword var value) and sections ([section] or
1867 section { }). Many files under /etc/, or with suffixes like .cf through
1868 .config, .properties (Java), .desktop (KDE/Gnome), .ini and many others are
1872 ** GDB-Script-mode is used for files like .gdbinit.
1875 ** The new python.el package is used to edit Python and Jython programs.
1878 ** The TCL package tcl-mode.el was replaced by tcl.el.
1879 This was actually done in Emacs-21.1, and was not documented.
1881 ** The new package scroll-lock.el provides the Scroll Lock minor mode
1882 for pager-like scrolling. Keys which normally move point by line or
1883 paragraph will scroll the buffer by the respective amount of lines
1884 instead and point will be kept vertically fixed relative to window
1885 boundaries during scrolling.
1887 * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 22.1:
1889 ** Changes in Allout
1891 *** Topic cryptography added, enabling easy gpg topic encryption and
1892 decryption. Per-topic basis enables interspersing encrypted-text and
1893 clear-text within a single file to your hearts content, using symmetric
1894 and/or public key modes. Time-limited key caching, user-provided
1895 symmetric key hinting and consistency verification, auto-encryption of
1896 pending topics on save, and more, make it easy to use encryption in
1899 *** many substantial fixes and refinements, including:
1901 - repaired inhibition of inadvertant edits to concealed text
1902 - repaired retention of topic body hanging indent upon topic depth shifts
1903 - prevent "containment discontinuities" where a topic is shifted deeper
1904 than the offspring-depth of its' container
1905 - easy to adopt the distinctive bullet of a topic in a topic created
1906 relative to it, or select a new one, or use the common topic bullet
1907 - plain bullets, by default, now alternate between only two characters
1908 ('.' and ','), yielding less cluttered outlines.
1909 - many internal fixes.
1911 ** The variable `woman-topic-at-point' was renamed
1912 to `woman-use-topic-at-point' and behaves differently: if this
1913 variable is non-nil, the `woman' command uses the word at point
1914 automatically, without asking for a confirmation. Otherwise, the word
1915 at point is suggested as default, but not inserted at the prompt.
1918 ** Changes to cmuscheme
1920 *** Emacs now offers to start Scheme if the user tries to
1921 evaluate a Scheme expression but no Scheme subprocess is running.
1923 *** If a file `.emacs_NAME' (where NAME is the name of the Scheme interpreter)
1924 exists in the user's home directory or in ~/.emacs.d, its
1925 contents are sent to the Scheme subprocess upon startup.
1927 *** There are new commands to instruct the Scheme interpreter to trace
1928 procedure calls (`scheme-trace-procedure') and to expand syntactic forms
1929 (`scheme-expand-current-form'). The commands actually sent to the Scheme
1930 subprocess are controlled by the user options `scheme-trace-command',
1931 `scheme-untrace-command' and `scheme-expand-current-form'.
1934 ** Makefile mode has submodes for automake, gmake, makepp and BSD make.
1936 The former two couldn't be differentiated before, and the latter two
1937 are new. Font-locking is robust now and offers new customizable
1941 ** In Outline mode, `hide-body' no longer hides lines at the top
1942 of the file that precede the first header line.
1945 ** Telnet now prompts you for a port number with C-u M-x telnet.
1948 ** The terminal emulation code in term.el has been improved; it can
1949 run most curses applications now.
1952 ** M-x diff uses Diff mode instead of Compilation mode.
1955 ** You can now customize `fill-nobreak-predicate' to control where
1956 filling can break lines. The value is now normally a list of
1957 functions, but it can also be a single function, for compatibility.
1959 Emacs provide two predicates, `fill-single-word-nobreak-p' and
1960 `fill-french-nobreak-p', for use as the value of
1961 `fill-nobreak-predicate'.
1964 ** M-x view-file and commands that use it now avoid interfering
1965 with special modes such as Tar mode.
1968 ** Commands `winner-redo' and `winner-undo', from winner.el, are now
1969 bound to C-c <left> and C-c <right>, respectively. This is an
1970 incompatible change.
1973 ** `global-whitespace-mode' is a new alias for `whitespace-global-mode'.
1976 ** M-x compare-windows now can automatically skip non-matching text to
1977 resync points in both windows.
1980 ** New user option `add-log-always-start-new-record'.
1982 When this option is enabled, M-x add-change-log-entry always
1983 starts a new record regardless of when the last record is.
1986 ** PO translation files are decoded according to their MIME headers
1987 when Emacs visits them.
1989 ** Info mode changes:
1992 *** A numeric prefix argument of `info' selects an Info buffer
1993 with the number appended to the `*info*' buffer name (e.g. "*info*<2>").
1996 *** isearch in Info uses Info-search and searches through multiple nodes.
1998 Before leaving the initial Info node isearch fails once with the error
1999 message [initial node], and with subsequent C-s/C-r continues through
2000 other nodes. When isearch fails for the rest of the manual, it wraps
2001 aroung the whole manual to the top/final node. The user option
2002 `Info-isearch-search' controls whether to use Info-search for isearch,
2003 or the default isearch search function that wraps around the current
2007 *** New search commands: `Info-search-case-sensitively' (bound to S),
2008 `Info-search-backward', and `Info-search-next' which repeats the last
2009 search without prompting for a new search string.
2012 *** New command `Info-history-forward' (bound to r and new toolbar icon)
2013 moves forward in history to the node you returned from after using
2014 `Info-history-back' (renamed from `Info-last').
2017 *** New command `Info-history' (bound to L) displays a menu of visited nodes.
2020 *** New command `Info-toc' (bound to T) creates a node with table of contents
2021 from the tree structure of menus of the current Info file.
2024 *** New command `info-apropos' searches the indices of the known
2025 Info files on your system for a string, and builds a menu of the
2029 *** New command `Info-copy-current-node-name' (bound to w) copies
2030 the current Info node name into the kill ring. With a zero prefix
2031 arg, puts the node name inside the `info' function call.
2034 *** New face `info-xref-visited' distinguishes visited nodes from unvisited
2035 and a new option `Info-fontify-visited-nodes' to control this.
2038 *** http and ftp links in Info are now operational: they look like cross
2039 references and following them calls `browse-url'.
2042 *** Info now hides node names in menus and cross references by default.
2044 If you prefer the old behavior, you can set the new user option
2045 `Info-hide-note-references' to nil.
2048 *** Images in Info pages are supported.
2050 Info pages show embedded images, in Emacs frames with image support.
2051 Info documentation that includes images, processed with makeinfo
2052 version 4.7 or newer, compiles to Info pages with embedded images.
2055 *** The default value for `Info-scroll-prefer-subnodes' is now nil.
2058 *** `Info-index' offers completion.
2060 ** Lisp mode changes:
2063 *** Lisp mode now uses `font-lock-doc-face' for doc strings.
2066 *** C-u C-M-q in Emacs Lisp mode pretty-prints the list after point.
2068 *** New features in evaluation commands
2071 **** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) called on defface reinitializes
2072 the face to the value specified in the defface expression.
2075 **** Typing C-x C-e twice prints the value of the integer result
2076 in additional formats (octal, hexadecimal, character) specified
2077 by the new function `eval-expression-print-format'. The same
2078 function also defines the result format for `eval-expression' (M-:),
2079 `eval-print-last-sexp' (C-j) and some edebug evaluation functions.
2084 *** Font lock support.
2085 CC Mode now provides font lock support for all its languages. This
2086 supersedes the font lock patterns that have been in the core font lock
2087 package for C, C++, Java and Objective-C. Like indentation, font
2088 locking is done in a uniform way across all languages (except the new
2089 AWK mode - see below). That means that the new font locking will be
2090 different from the old patterns in various details for most languages.
2092 The main goal of the font locking in CC Mode is accuracy, to provide a
2093 dependable aid in recognizing the various constructs. Some, like
2094 strings and comments, are easy to recognize while others like
2095 declarations and types can be very tricky. CC Mode can go to great
2096 lengths to recognize declarations and casts correctly, especially when
2097 the types aren't recognized by standard patterns. This is a fairly
2098 demanding analysis which can be slow on older hardware, and it can
2099 therefore be disabled by choosing a lower decoration level with the
2100 variable font-lock-maximum-decoration.
2102 Note that the most demanding font lock level has been tuned with lazy
2103 fontification in mind, i.e. there should be a support mode that waits
2104 with the fontification until the text is actually shown
2105 (e.g. Just-in-time Lock mode, which is the default, or Lazy Lock
2106 mode). Fontifying a file with several thousand lines in one go can
2107 take the better part of a minute.
2109 **** The (c|c++|objc|java|idl|pike)-font-lock-extra-types variables
2110 are now used by CC Mode to recognize identifiers that are certain to
2111 be types. (They are also used in cases that aren't related to font
2112 locking.) At the maximum decoration level, types are often recognized
2113 properly anyway, so these variables should be fairly restrictive and
2114 not contain patterns for uncertain types.
2116 **** Support for documentation comments.
2117 There is a "plugin" system to fontify documentation comments like
2118 Javadoc and the markup within them. It's independent of the host
2119 language, so it's possible to e.g. turn on Javadoc font locking in C
2120 buffers. See the variable c-doc-comment-style for details.
2122 Currently two kinds of doc comment styles are recognized: Suns Javadoc
2123 and Autodoc which is used in Pike. This is by no means a complete
2124 list of the most common tools; if your doc comment extractor of choice
2125 is missing then please drop a note to bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.
2127 **** Better handling of C++ templates.
2128 As a side effect of the more accurate font locking, C++ templates are
2129 now handled much better. The angle brackets that delimit them are
2130 given parenthesis syntax so that they can be navigated like other
2133 This also improves indentation of templates, although there still is
2134 work to be done in that area. E.g. it's required that multiline
2135 template clauses are written in full and then refontified to be
2136 recognized, and the indentation of nested templates is a bit odd and
2137 not as configurable as it ought to be.
2139 **** Improved handling of Objective-C and CORBA IDL.
2140 Especially the support for Objective-C and IDL has gotten an overhaul.
2141 The special "@" declarations in Objective-C are handled correctly.
2142 All the keywords used in CORBA IDL, PSDL, and CIDL are recognized and
2143 handled correctly, also wrt indentation.
2145 *** Support for the AWK language.
2146 Support for the AWK language has been introduced. The implementation is
2147 based around GNU AWK version 3.1, but it should work pretty well with
2148 any AWK. As yet, not all features of CC Mode have been adapted for AWK.
2151 **** Indentation Engine
2152 The CC Mode indentation engine fully supports AWK mode.
2154 AWK mode handles code formatted in the conventional AWK fashion: `{'s
2155 which start actions, user-defined functions, or compound statements are
2156 placed on the same line as the associated construct; the matching `}'s
2157 are normally placed under the start of the respective pattern, function
2158 definition, or structured statement.
2160 The predefined indentation functions haven't yet been adapted for AWK
2161 mode, though some of them may work serendipitously. There shouldn't be
2162 any problems writing custom indentation functions for AWK mode.
2164 The command C-c C-q (c-indent-defun) hasn't yet been adapted for AWK,
2165 though in practice it works properly nearly all the time. Should it
2166 fail, explicitly set the region around the function (using C-u C-SPC:
2167 C-M-h probably won't work either) then do C-M-\ (indent-region).
2170 There is a single level of font locking in AWK mode, rather than the
2171 three distinct levels the other modes have. There are several
2172 idiosyncrasies in AWK mode's font-locking due to the peculiarities of
2173 the AWK language itself.
2175 **** Comment Commands
2176 M-; (indent-for-comment) works fine. None of the other CC Mode
2177 comment formatting commands have yet been adapted for AWK mode.
2179 **** Movement Commands
2180 Most of the movement commands work in AWK mode. The most important
2181 exceptions are M-a (c-beginning-of-statement) and M-e
2182 (c-end-of-statement) which haven't yet been adapted.
2184 The notion of "defun" has been augmented to include AWK pattern-action
2185 pairs. C-M-a (c-awk-beginning-of-defun) and C-M-e (c-awk-end-of-defun)
2186 recognize these pattern-action pairs, as well as user defined
2189 **** Auto-newline Insertion and Clean-ups
2190 Auto-newline insertion hasn't yet been adapted for AWK. Some of
2191 the clean-ups can actually convert good AWK code into syntactically
2192 invalid code. These features are best disabled in AWK buffers.
2194 *** New syntactic symbols in IDL mode.
2195 The top level constructs "module" and "composition" (from CIDL) are
2196 now handled like "namespace" in C++: They are given syntactic symbols
2197 module-open, module-close, inmodule, composition-open,
2198 composition-close, and incomposition.
2200 *** New functions to do hungry delete without enabling hungry delete mode.
2201 The functions `c-hungry-backspace' and `c-hungry-delete-forward' can be
2202 bound to keys to get this feature without toggling a mode.
2204 *** Better control over `require-final-newline'.
2206 The variable `c-require-final-newline' specifies which of the modes
2207 implemented by CC mode should insert final newlines. Its value is a
2208 list of modes, and only those modes should do it. By default the list
2209 includes C, C++ and Objective-C modes.
2211 Whichever modes are in this list will set `require-final-newline'
2212 based on `mode-require-final-newline'.
2214 *** Format change for syntactic context elements.
2216 The elements in the syntactic context returned by `c-guess-basic-syntax'
2217 and stored in `c-syntactic-context' has been changed somewhat to allow
2218 attaching more information. They are now lists instead of single cons
2219 cells. E.g. a line that previously had the syntactic analysis
2221 ((inclass . 11) (topmost-intro . 13))
2225 ((inclass 11) (topmost-intro 13))
2227 In some cases there are more than one position given for a syntactic
2230 This change might affect code that call `c-guess-basic-syntax' directly,
2231 and custom lineup functions if they use `c-syntactic-context'. However,
2232 the argument given to lineup functions is still a single cons cell
2233 with nil or an integer in the cdr.
2235 *** API changes for derived modes.
2237 There have been extensive changes "under the hood" which can affect
2238 derived mode writers. Some of these changes are likely to cause
2239 incompatibilities with existing derived modes, but on the other hand
2240 care has now been taken to make it possible to extend and modify CC
2241 Mode with less risk of such problems in the future.
2243 **** New language variable system.
2244 See the comment blurb near the top of cc-langs.el.
2246 **** New initialization functions.
2247 The initialization procedure has been split up into more functions to
2248 give better control: `c-basic-common-init', `c-font-lock-init', and
2249 `c-init-language-vars'.
2251 *** Changes in analysis of nested syntactic constructs.
2252 The syntactic analysis engine has better handling of cases where
2253 several syntactic constructs appear nested on the same line. They are
2254 now handled as if each construct started on a line of its own.
2256 This means that CC Mode now indents some cases differently, and
2257 although it's more consistent there might be cases where the old way
2258 gave results that's more to one's liking. So if you find a situation
2259 where you think that the indentation has become worse, please report
2260 it to bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.
2262 **** New syntactic symbol substatement-label.
2263 This symbol is used when a label is inserted between a statement and
2264 its substatement. E.g:
2270 *** Better handling of multiline macros.
2272 **** Syntactic indentation inside macros.
2273 The contents of multiline #define's are now analyzed and indented
2274 syntactically just like other code. This can be disabled by the new
2275 variable `c-syntactic-indentation-in-macros'. A new syntactic symbol
2276 `cpp-define-intro' has been added to control the initial indentation
2279 **** New lineup function `c-lineup-cpp-define'.
2281 Now used by default to line up macro continuation lines. The behavior
2282 of this function closely mimics the indentation one gets if the macro
2283 is indented while the line continuation backslashes are temporarily
2284 removed. If syntactic indentation in macros is turned off, it works
2285 much line `c-lineup-dont-change', which was used earlier, but handles
2286 empty lines within the macro better.
2288 **** Automatically inserted newlines continues the macro if used within one.
2289 This applies to the newlines inserted by the auto-newline mode, and to
2290 `c-context-line-break' and `c-context-open-line'.
2292 **** Better alignment of line continuation backslashes.
2293 `c-backslash-region' tries to adapt to surrounding backslashes. New
2294 variable `c-backslash-max-column' which put a limit on how far out
2295 backslashes can be moved.
2297 **** Automatic alignment of line continuation backslashes.
2298 This is controlled by the new variable `c-auto-align-backslashes'. It
2299 affects `c-context-line-break', `c-context-open-line' and newlines
2300 inserted in Auto-Newline mode.
2301 **** Line indentation works better inside macros.
2303 Regardless whether syntactic indentation and syntactic indentation
2304 inside macros are enabled or not, line indentation now ignores the
2305 line continuation backslashes. This is most noticeable when syntactic
2306 indentation is turned off and there are empty lines (save for the
2307 backslash) in the macro.
2309 *** indent-for-comment is more customizable.
2310 The behavior of M-; (indent-for-comment) is now configurable through
2311 the variable `c-indent-comment-alist'. The indentation behavior based
2312 on the preceding code on the line, e.g. to get two spaces after #else
2313 and #endif but indentation to `comment-column' in most other cases
2314 (something which was hardcoded earlier).
2316 *** New function `c-context-open-line'.
2317 It's the open-line equivalent of `c-context-line-break'.
2319 *** New lineup functions
2321 **** `c-lineup-string-cont'
2322 This lineup function lines up a continued string under the one it
2325 result = prefix + "A message "
2326 "string."; <- c-lineup-string-cont
2328 **** `c-lineup-cascaded-calls'
2329 Lines up series of calls separated by "->" or ".".
2331 **** `c-lineup-knr-region-comment'
2332 Gives (what most people think is) better indentation of comments in
2333 the "K&R region" between the function header and its body.
2335 **** `c-lineup-gcc-asm-reg'
2336 Provides better indentation inside asm blocks.
2338 **** `c-lineup-argcont'
2339 Lines up continued function arguments after the preceding comma.
2341 *** Better caching of the syntactic context.
2342 CC Mode caches the positions of the opening parentheses (of any kind)
2343 of the lists surrounding the point. Those positions are used in many
2344 places as anchor points for various searches. The cache is now
2345 improved so that it can be reused to a large extent when the point is
2346 moved. The less it moves, the less needs to be recalculated.
2348 The effect is that CC Mode should be fast most of the time even when
2349 opening parens are hung (i.e. aren't in column zero). It's typically
2350 only the first time after the point is moved far down in a complex
2351 file that it'll take noticeable time to find out the syntactic
2354 *** Statements are recognized in a more robust way.
2355 Statements are recognized most of the time even when they occur in an
2356 "invalid" context, e.g. in a function argument. In practice that can
2357 happen when macros are involved.
2359 *** Improved the way `c-indent-exp' chooses the block to indent.
2360 It now indents the block for the closest sexp following the point
2361 whose closing paren ends on a different line. This means that the
2362 point doesn't have to be immediately before the block to indent.
2363 Also, only the block and the closing line is indented; the current
2364 line is left untouched.
2366 *** Added toggle for syntactic indentation.
2367 The function `c-toggle-syntactic-indentation' can be used to toggle
2368 syntactic indentation.
2370 ** In sh-script, a continuation line is only indented if the backslash was
2371 preceded by a SPC or a TAB.
2374 ** Perl mode has a new variable `perl-indent-continued-arguments'.
2377 ** The old Octave mode bindings C-c f and C-c i have been changed
2378 to C-c C-f and C-c C-i. The C-c C-i subcommands now have duplicate
2379 bindings on control characters--thus, C-c C-i C-b is the same as
2380 C-c C-i b, and so on.
2382 ** Fortran mode changes:
2385 *** Fortran mode does more font-locking by default. Use level 3
2386 highlighting for the old default.
2389 *** Fortran mode has a new variable `fortran-directive-re'.
2390 Adapt this to match the format of any compiler directives you use.
2391 Lines that match are never indented, and are given distinctive font-locking.
2394 *** F90 mode and Fortran mode have new navigation commands
2395 `f90-end-of-block', `f90-beginning-of-block', `f90-next-block',
2396 `f90-previous-block', `fortran-end-of-block',
2397 `fortran-beginning-of-block'.
2400 *** F90 mode and Fortran mode have support for `hs-minor-mode' (hideshow).
2401 It cannot deal with every code format, but ought to handle a sizeable
2405 *** The new function `f90-backslash-not-special' can be used to change
2406 the syntax of backslashes in F90 buffers.
2409 ** Reftex mode changes
2411 *** Changes to RefTeX's table of contents
2413 The new command keys "<" and ">" in the TOC buffer promote/demote the
2414 section at point or all sections in the current region, with full
2415 support for multifile documents.
2417 The new command `reftex-toc-recenter' (`C-c -') shows the current
2418 section in the TOC buffer without selecting the TOC window.
2419 Recentering can happen automatically in idle time when the option
2420 `reftex-auto-recenter-toc' is turned on. The highlight in the TOC
2421 buffer stays when the focus moves to a different window. A dedicated
2422 frame can show the TOC with the current section always automatically
2423 highlighted. The frame is created and deleted from the toc buffer
2426 The toc window can be split off horizontally instead of vertically.
2427 See new option `reftex-toc-split-windows-horizontally'.
2429 Labels can be renamed globally from the table of contents using the
2432 The new command `reftex-goto-label' jumps directly to a label
2436 *** Changes related to citations and BibTeX database files
2438 Commands that insert a citation now prompt for optional arguments when
2439 called with a prefix argument. Related new options are
2440 `reftex-cite-prompt-optional-args' and `reftex-cite-cleanup-optional-args'.
2442 The new command `reftex-create-bibtex-file' creates a BibTeX database
2443 with all entries referenced in the current document. The keys "e" and
2444 "E" allow to produce a BibTeX database file from entries marked in a
2445 citation selection buffer.
2447 The command `reftex-citation' uses the word in the buffer before the
2448 cursor as a default search string.
2450 The support for chapterbib has been improved. Different chapters can
2451 now use BibTeX or an explicit `thebibliography' environment.
2453 The macros which specify the bibliography file (like \bibliography)
2454 can be configured with the new option `reftex-bibliography-commands'.
2456 Support for jurabib has been added.
2459 *** Global index matched may be verified with a user function
2461 During global indexing, a user function can verify an index match.
2462 See new option `reftex-index-verify-function'.
2465 *** Parsing documents with many labels can be sped up.
2467 Operating in a document with thousands of labels can be sped up
2468 considerably by allowing RefTeX to derive the type of a label directly
2469 from the label prefix like `eq:' or `fig:'. The option
2470 `reftex-trust-label-prefix' needs to be configured in order to enable
2471 this feature. While the speed-up is significant, this may reduce the
2472 quality of the context offered by RefTeX to describe a label.
2475 *** Miscellaneous changes
2477 The macros which input a file in LaTeX (like \input, \include) can be
2478 configured in the new option `reftex-include-file-commands'.
2480 RefTeX supports global incremental search.
2483 ** Prolog mode has a new variable `prolog-font-lock-keywords'
2484 to support use of font-lock.
2486 ** HTML/SGML changes:
2489 *** Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding systems for HTML/XML files
2493 *** SGML mode has indentation and supports XML syntax.
2494 The new variable `sgml-xml-mode' tells SGML mode to use XML syntax.
2495 When this option is enabled, SGML tags are inserted in XML style,
2496 i.e., there is always a closing tag.
2497 By default, its setting is inferred on a buffer-by-buffer basis
2498 from the file name or buffer contents.
2501 *** `xml-mode' is now an alias for `sgml-mode', which has XML support.
2506 *** C-c C-c prompts for a command to run, and tries to offer a good default.
2509 *** The user option `tex-start-options-string' has been replaced
2510 by two new user options: `tex-start-options', which should hold
2511 command-line options to feed to TeX, and `tex-start-commands' which should hold
2512 TeX commands to use at startup.
2515 *** verbatim environments are now highlighted in courier by font-lock
2516 and super/sub-scripts are made into super/sub-scripts.
2519 *** New major mode Doctex mode, for *.dtx files.
2523 *** The new command `bibtex-url' browses a URL for the BibTeX entry at
2524 point (bound to C-c C-l and mouse-2, RET on clickable fields).
2526 *** The new command `bibtex-entry-update' (bound to C-c C-u) updates
2527 an existing BibTeX entry.
2529 *** New `bibtex-entry-format' option `required-fields', enabled by default.
2531 *** `bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries' can take values `plain',
2532 `crossref', and `entry-class' which control the sorting scheme used
2533 for BibTeX entries. `bibtex-sort-entry-class' controls the sorting
2534 scheme `entry-class'. TAB completion for reference keys and
2535 automatic detection of duplicates does not require anymore that
2536 `bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries' is non-nil.
2538 *** If the new variable `bibtex-parse-keys-fast' is non-nil,
2539 use fast but simplified algorithm for parsing BibTeX keys.
2541 *** If the new variable `bibtex-autoadd-commas' is non-nil,
2542 automatically add missing commas at end of BibTeX fields.
2544 *** The new variable `bibtex-autofill-types' contains a list of entry
2545 types for which fields are filled automatically (if possible).
2547 *** The new command `bibtex-complete' completes word fragment before
2548 point according to context (bound to M-tab).
2550 *** The new commands `bibtex-find-entry' and `bibtex-find-crossref'
2551 locate entries and crossref'd entries (bound to C-c C-s and C-c C-x).
2552 Crossref fields are clickable (bound to mouse-2, RET).
2554 *** In BibTeX mode the command `fill-paragraph' (M-q) fills
2555 individual fields of a BibTeX entry.
2557 *** The new variables `bibtex-files' and `bibtex-file-path' define a set
2558 of BibTeX files that are searched for entry keys.
2560 *** The new command `bibtex-validate-globally' checks for duplicate keys
2561 in multiple BibTeX files.
2563 *** The new command `bibtex-copy-summary-as-kill' pushes summary
2564 of BibTeX entry to kill ring (bound to C-c C-t).
2567 ** In Enriched mode, `set-left-margin' and `set-right-margin' are now
2568 by default bound to `C-c [' and `C-c ]' instead of the former `C-c C-l'
2574 *** In GUD mode, when talking to GDB, C-x C-a C-j "jumps" the program
2575 counter to the specified source line (the one where point is).
2578 *** GUD mode has its own tool bar for controlling execution of the inferior
2579 and other common debugger commands.
2582 *** The new package gdb-ui.el provides an enhanced graphical interface to
2583 GDB. You can interact with GDB through the GUD buffer in the usual way, but
2584 there are also further buffers which control the execution and describe the
2585 state of your program. It can separate the input/output of your program from
2586 that of GDB and watches expressions in the speedbar. It also uses features of
2587 Emacs 21/22 such as the toolbar, and bitmaps in the fringe to indicate
2590 Use M-x gdb to start GDB-UI.
2592 *** The variable tooltip-gud-tips-p has been removed. GUD tooltips can now be
2593 toggled independently of normal tooltips with the minor mode
2597 *** In graphical mode, with a C program, GUD Tooltips have been extended to
2598 display the #define directive associated with an identifier when program is
2602 ** GUD mode improvements for jdb:
2604 *** Search for source files using jdb classpath and class
2605 information. Fast startup since there is no need to scan all
2606 source files up front. There is also no need to create and maintain
2607 lists of source directories to scan. Look at `gud-jdb-use-classpath'
2608 and `gud-jdb-classpath' customization variables documentation.
2610 *** Supports the standard breakpoint (gud-break, gud-clear)
2611 set/clear operations from java source files under the classpath, stack
2612 traversal (gud-up, gud-down), and run until current stack finish
2615 *** Supports new jdb (Java 1.2 and later) in addition to oldjdb
2618 *** The previous method of searching for source files has been
2619 preserved in case someone still wants/needs to use it.
2620 Set `gud-jdb-use-classpath' to nil.
2622 Added Customization Variables
2624 *** `gud-jdb-command-name'. What command line to use to invoke jdb.
2626 *** `gud-jdb-use-classpath'. Allows selection of java source file searching
2627 method: set to t for new method, nil to scan `gud-jdb-directories' for
2628 java sources (previous method).
2630 *** `gud-jdb-directories'. List of directories to scan and search for java
2631 classes using the original gud-jdb method (if `gud-jdb-use-classpath'
2636 *** The STARTTLS wrapper (starttls.el) can now use GNUTLS
2637 instead of the OpenSSL based `starttls' tool. For backwards
2638 compatibility, it prefers `starttls', but you can toggle
2639 `starttls-use-gnutls' to switch to GNUTLS (or simply remove the
2642 *** Do not allow debugger output history variable to grow without bounds.
2644 ** Auto-Revert changes:
2647 *** You can now use Auto Revert mode to `tail' a file.
2649 If point is at the end of a file buffer before reverting, Auto Revert
2650 mode keeps it at the end after reverting. Similarly if point is
2651 displayed at the end of a file buffer in any window, it stays at
2652 the end of the buffer in that window. This allows to tail a file:
2653 just put point at the end of the buffer and it stays there. This
2654 rule applies to file buffers. For non-file buffers, the behavior can
2657 If you are sure that the file will only change by growing at the end,
2658 then you can tail the file more efficiently by using the new minor
2659 mode Auto Revert Tail mode. The function `auto-revert-tail-mode'
2663 *** Auto Revert mode is now more careful to avoid excessive reverts and
2664 other potential problems when deciding which non-file buffers to
2665 revert. This matters especially if Global Auto Revert mode is enabled
2666 and `global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers' is non-nil. Auto Revert
2667 mode only reverts a non-file buffer if the buffer has a non-nil
2668 `revert-buffer-function' and a non-nil `buffer-stale-function', which
2669 decides whether the buffer should be reverted. Currently, this means
2670 that auto reverting works for Dired buffers (although this may not
2671 work properly on all operating systems) and for the Buffer Menu.
2674 *** If the new user option `auto-revert-check-vc-info' is non-nil, Auto
2675 Revert mode reliably updates version control info (such as the version
2676 control number in the mode line), in all version controlled buffers in
2677 which it is active. If the option is nil, the default, then this info
2678 only gets updated whenever the buffer gets reverted.
2683 The recent file list is now automatically cleanup when recentf mode is
2684 enabled. The new option `recentf-auto-cleanup' controls when to do
2687 The ten most recent files can be quickly opened by using the shortcut
2688 keys 1 to 9, and 0, when the recent list is displayed in a buffer via
2689 the `recentf-open-files', or `recentf-open-more-files' commands.
2691 The `recentf-keep' option replaces `recentf-keep-non-readable-files-p'
2692 and provides a more general mechanism to customize which file names to
2693 keep in the recent list.
2695 With the more advanced option `recentf-filename-handlers', you can
2696 specify functions that successively transform recent file names. For
2697 example, if set to `file-truename' plus `abbreviate-file-name', the
2698 same file will not be in the recent list with different symbolic
2699 links, and the file name will be abbreviated.
2701 To follow naming convention, `recentf-menu-append-commands-flag'
2702 replaces the misnamed option `recentf-menu-append-commands-p'. The
2703 old name remains available as alias, but has been marked obsolete.
2709 *** Desktop saving is now a minor mode, `desktop-save-mode'.
2712 *** The variable `desktop-enable' is obsolete.
2714 Customize `desktop-save-mode' to enable desktop saving.
2717 *** Buffers are saved in the desktop file in the same order as that in the
2721 *** The desktop package can be customized to restore only some buffers
2722 immediately, remaining buffers are restored lazily (when Emacs is
2727 - desktop-revert reverts to the last loaded desktop.
2728 - desktop-change-dir kills current desktop and loads a new.
2729 - desktop-save-in-desktop-dir saves desktop in the directory from which
2731 - desktop-lazy-complete runs the desktop load to completion.
2732 - desktop-lazy-abort aborts lazy loading of the desktop.
2735 *** New customizable variables:
2736 - desktop-save. Determins whether the desktop should be saved when it is
2738 - desktop-file-name-format. Format in which desktop file names should be saved.
2739 - desktop-path. List of directories in which to lookup the desktop file.
2740 - desktop-locals-to-save. List of local variables to save.
2741 - desktop-globals-to-clear. List of global variables that `desktop-clear' will clear.
2742 - desktop-clear-preserve-buffers-regexp. Regexp identifying buffers that `desktop-clear'
2744 - desktop-restore-eager. Number of buffers to restore immediately. Remaining buffers are
2745 restored lazily (when Emacs is idle).
2746 - desktop-lazy-verbose. Verbose reporting of lazily created buffers.
2747 - desktop-lazy-idle-delay. Idle delay before starting to create buffers.
2750 *** New command line option --no-desktop
2754 - desktop-after-read-hook run after a desktop is loaded.
2755 - desktop-no-desktop-file-hook run when no desktop file is found.
2758 ** The saveplace.el package now filters out unreadable files.
2760 When you exit Emacs, the saved positions in visited files no longer
2761 include files that aren't readable, e.g. files that don't exist.
2762 Customize the new option `save-place-forget-unreadable-files' to nil
2763 to get the old behavior. The new options `save-place-save-skipped'
2764 and `save-place-skip-check-regexp' allow further fine-tuning of this
2770 *** When comparing directories.
2771 Typing D brings up a buffer that lists the differences between the contents of
2772 directories. Now it is possible to use this buffer to copy the missing files
2773 from one directory to another.
2776 *** When comparing files or buffers.
2777 Typing the = key now offers to perform the word-by-word comparison of the
2778 currently highlighted regions in an inferior Ediff session. If you answer 'n'
2779 then it reverts to the old behavior and asks the user to select regions for
2783 *** The new command `ediff-backup' compares a file with its most recent
2784 backup using `ediff'. If you specify the name of a backup file,
2785 `ediff-backup' compares it with the file of which it is a backup.
2790 *** New regular expressions features
2792 **** New syntax for regular expressions, multi-line regular expressions.
2794 The syntax --ignore-case-regexp=/regex/ is now undocumented and retained
2795 only for backward compatibility. The new equivalent syntax is
2796 --regex=/regex/i. More generally, it is --regex=/TAGREGEX/TAGNAME/MODS,
2797 where `/TAGNAME' is optional, as usual, and MODS is a string of 0 or
2798 more characters among `i' (ignore case), `m' (multi-line) and `s'
2799 (single-line). The `m' and `s' modifiers behave as in Perl regular
2800 expressions: `m' allows regexps to match more than one line, while `s'
2801 (which implies `m') means that `.' matches newlines. The ability to
2802 span newlines allows writing of much more powerful regular expressions
2803 and rapid prototyping for tagging new languages.
2805 **** Regular expressions can use char escape sequences as in GCC.
2807 The escaped character sequence \a, \b, \d, \e, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v,
2808 respectively, stand for the ASCII characters BEL, BS, DEL, ESC, FF, NL,
2811 **** Regular expressions can be bound to a given language.
2813 The syntax --regex={LANGUAGE}REGEX means that REGEX is used to make tags
2814 only for files of language LANGUAGE, and ignored otherwise. This is
2815 particularly useful when storing regexps in a file.
2817 **** Regular expressions can be read from a file.
2819 The --regex=@regexfile option means read the regexps from a file, one
2820 per line. Lines beginning with space or tab are ignored.
2822 *** New language parsing features
2824 **** The `::' qualifier triggers C++ parsing in C file.
2826 Previously, only the `template' and `class' keywords had this effect.
2828 **** The GCC __attribute__ keyword is now recognized and ignored.
2830 **** New language HTML.
2832 Tags are generated for `title' as well as `h1', `h2', and `h3'. Also,
2833 when `name=' is used inside an anchor and whenever `id=' is used.
2835 **** In Makefiles, constants are tagged.
2837 If you want the old behavior instead, thus avoiding to increase the
2838 size of the tags file, use the --no-globals option.
2840 **** New language Lua.
2842 All functions are tagged.
2844 **** In Perl, packages are tags.
2846 Subroutine tags are named from their package. You can jump to sub tags
2847 as you did before, by the sub name, or additionally by looking for
2850 **** In Prolog, etags creates tags for rules in addition to predicates.
2852 **** New language PHP.
2854 Functions, classes and defines are tags. If the --members option is
2855 specified to etags, variables are tags also.
2857 **** New default keywords for TeX.
2859 The new keywords are def, newcommand, renewcommand, newenvironment and
2862 *** Honour #line directives.
2864 When Etags parses an input file that contains C preprocessor's #line
2865 directives, it creates tags using the file name and line number
2866 specified in those directives. This is useful when dealing with code
2867 created from Cweb source files. When Etags tags the generated file, it
2868 writes tags pointing to the source file.
2870 *** New option --parse-stdin=FILE.
2872 This option is mostly useful when calling etags from programs. It can
2873 be used (only once) in place of a file name on the command line. Etags
2874 reads from standard input and marks the produced tags as belonging to
2880 *** The key C-x C-q only changes the read-only state of the buffer
2881 (toggle-read-only). It no longer checks files in or out.
2883 We made this change because we held a poll and found that many users
2884 were unhappy with the previous behavior. If you do prefer this
2885 behavior, you can bind `vc-toggle-read-only' to C-x C-q in your
2888 (global-set-key "\C-x\C-q" 'vc-toggle-read-only)
2890 The function `vc-toggle-read-only' will continue to exist.
2893 *** The new variable `vc-cvs-global-switches' specifies switches that
2894 are passed to any CVS command invoked by VC.
2896 These switches are used as "global options" for CVS, which means they
2897 are inserted before the command name. For example, this allows you to
2898 specify a compression level using the `-z#' option for CVS.
2901 *** New backends for Subversion and Meta-CVS.
2904 *** VC-Annotate mode enhancements
2906 In VC-Annotate mode, you can now use the following key bindings for
2907 enhanced functionality to browse the annotations of past revisions, or
2908 to view diffs or log entries directly from vc-annotate-mode:
2910 P: annotates the previous revision
2911 N: annotates the next revision
2912 J: annotates the revision at line
2913 A: annotates the revision previous to line
2914 D: shows the diff of the revision at line with its previous revision
2915 L: shows the log of the revision at line
2916 W: annotates the workfile (most up to date) version
2921 *** In pcl-cvs mode, there is a new `d y' command to view the diffs
2922 between the local version of the file and yesterday's head revision
2926 *** In pcl-cvs mode, there is a new `d r' command to view the changes
2927 anyone has committed to the repository since you last executed
2928 `checkout', `update' or `commit'. That means using cvs diff options
2932 ** The new variable `mail-default-directory' specifies
2933 `default-directory' for mail buffers. This directory is used for
2934 auto-save files of mail buffers. It defaults to "~/".
2937 ** The mode line can indicate new mail in a directory or file.
2939 See the documentation of the user option
2940 `display-time-mail-directory'.
2945 *** Rmail now displays 5-digit message ids in its summary buffer.
2947 *** The new commands rmail-end-of-message and rmail-summary end-of-message,
2948 by default bound to `/', go to the end of the current mail message in
2949 Rmail and Rmail summary buffers.
2952 *** Support for `movemail' from GNU mailutils was added to Rmail.
2954 This version of `movemail' allows to read mail from a wide range of
2955 mailbox formats, including remote POP3 and IMAP4 mailboxes with or
2956 without TLS encryption. If GNU mailutils is installed on the system
2957 and its version of `movemail' can be found in exec-path, it will be
2958 used instead of the native one.
2963 *** Gnus now includes Sieve and PGG
2965 Sieve is a library for managing Sieve scripts. PGG is a library to handle
2969 *** There are many news features, bug fixes and improvements.
2971 See the file GNUS-NEWS or the node "Oort Gnus" in the Gnus manual for details.
2976 Upgraded to MH-E version 7.85. There have been major changes since
2977 version 5.0.2; see MH-E-NEWS for details.
2979 ** Calendar changes:
2982 *** You can now use < and >, instead of C-x < and C-x >, to scroll
2983 the calendar left or right. (The old key bindings still work too.)
2986 *** There is a new calendar package, icalendar.el, that can be used to
2987 convert Emacs diary entries to/from the iCalendar format.
2990 *** Diary sexp entries can have custom marking in the calendar.
2991 Diary sexp functions which only apply to certain days (such as
2992 `diary-block' or `diary-cyclic') now take an optional parameter MARK,
2993 which is the name of a face or a single-character string indicating
2994 how to highlight the day in the calendar display. Specifying a
2995 single-character string as @var{mark} places the character next to the
2996 day in the calendar. Specifying a face highlights the day with that
2997 face. This lets you have different colors or markings for vacations,
2998 appointments, paydays or anything else using a sexp.
3001 *** The new function `calendar-goto-day-of-year' (g D) prompts for a
3002 year and day number, and moves to that date. Negative day numbers
3003 count backward from the end of the year.
3006 *** The new Calendar function `calendar-goto-iso-week' (g w)
3007 prompts for a year and a week number, and moves to the first
3008 day of that ISO week.
3011 *** The new variable `calendar-minimum-window-height' affects the
3012 window generated by the function `generate-calendar-window'.
3015 *** The functions `holiday-easter-etc' and `holiday-advent' now take
3016 optional arguments, in order to only report on the specified holiday
3017 rather than all. This makes customization of variables such as
3018 `christian-holidays' simpler.
3021 *** The function `simple-diary-display' now by default sets a header line.
3022 This can be controlled through the variables `diary-header-line-flag'
3023 and `diary-header-line-format'.
3026 *** The procedure for activating appointment reminders has changed:
3027 use the new function `appt-activate'. The new variable
3028 `appt-display-format' controls how reminders are displayed, replacing
3029 `appt-issue-message', `appt-visible', and `appt-msg-window'.
3032 *** The new functions `diary-from-outlook', `diary-from-outlook-gnus',
3033 and `diary-from-outlook-rmail' can be used to import diary entries
3034 from Outlook-format appointments in mail messages. The variable
3035 `diary-outlook-formats' can be customized to recognize additional
3039 ** Speedbar changes:
3041 *** Speedbar items can now be selected by clicking mouse-1, based on
3042 the `mouse-1-click-follows-link' mechanism.
3044 *** SPC and DEL are no longer bound to scroll up/down in the speedbar
3047 *** The new command `speedbar-toggle-line-expansion', bound to SPC,
3048 contracts or expands the line under the cursor.
3050 *** New command `speedbar-create-directory', bound to `M'.
3052 *** The new commands `speedbar-expand-line-descendants' and
3053 `speedbar-contract-line-descendants', bound to `[' and `]'
3054 respectively, expand and contract the line under cursor with all of
3057 *** The new user option `speedbar-query-confirmation-method' controls
3058 how querying is performed for file operations. A value of 'always
3059 means to always query before file operations; 'none-but-delete means
3060 to not query before any file operations, except before a file
3063 *** The new user option `speedbar-select-frame-method' specifies how
3064 to select a frame for displaying a file opened with the speedbar. A
3065 value of 'attached means to use the attached frame (the frame that
3066 speedbar was started from.) A number such as 1 or -1 means to pass
3067 that number to `other-frame'.
3069 *** The new user option `speedbar-use-tool-tips-flag', if non-nil,
3070 means to display tool-tips for speedbar items.
3072 *** The frame management code in speedbar.el has been split into a new
3073 `dframe' library. Emacs Lisp code that makes use of the speedbar
3074 should use `dframe-attached-frame' instead of
3075 `speedbar-attached-frame', `dframe-timer' instead of `speedbar-timer',
3076 `dframe-close-frame' instead of `speedbar-close-frame', and
3077 `dframe-activity-change-focus-flag' instead of
3078 `speedbar-activity-change-focus-flag'. The variables
3079 `speedbar-update-speed' and `speedbar-navigating-speed' are also
3080 obsolete; use `dframe-update-speed' instead.
3085 *** The variable `sql-product' controls the highlightng of different
3086 SQL dialects. This variable can be set globally via Customize, on a
3087 buffer-specific basis via local variable settings, or for the current
3088 session using the new SQL->Product submenu. (This menu replaces the
3089 SQL->Highlighting submenu.)
3091 The following values are supported:
3093 ansi ANSI Standard (default)
3107 The current product name will be shown on the mode line following the
3110 The technique of setting `sql-mode-font-lock-defaults' directly in
3111 your `.emacs' will no longer establish the default highlighting -- Use
3112 `sql-product' to accomplish this.
3114 ANSI keywords are always highlighted.
3116 *** The function `sql-add-product-keywords' can be used to add
3117 font-lock rules to the product specific rules. For example, to have
3118 all identifiers ending in `_t' under MS SQLServer treated as a type,
3119 you would use the following line in your .emacs file:
3121 (sql-add-product-keywords 'ms
3122 '(("\\<\\w+_t\\>" . font-lock-type-face)))
3124 *** Oracle support includes keyword highlighting for Oracle 9i.
3126 Most SQL and PL/SQL keywords are implemented. SQL*Plus commands are
3127 highlighted in `font-lock-doc-face'.
3129 *** Microsoft SQLServer support has been significantly improved.
3131 Keyword highlighting for SqlServer 2000 is implemented.
3132 sql-interactive-mode defaults to use osql, rather than isql, because
3133 osql flushes its error stream more frequently. Thus error messages
3134 are displayed when they occur rather than when the session is
3137 If the username and password are not provided to `sql-ms', osql is
3138 called with the `-E' command line argument to use the operating system
3139 credentials to authenticate the user.
3141 *** Postgres support is enhanced.
3142 Keyword highlighting of Postgres 7.3 is implemented. Prompting for
3143 the username and the pgsql `-U' option is added.
3145 *** MySQL support is enhanced.
3146 Keyword higlighting of MySql 4.0 is implemented.
3148 *** Imenu support has been enhanced to locate tables, views, indexes,
3149 packages, procedures, functions, triggers, sequences, rules, and
3152 *** Added SQL->Start SQLi Session menu entry which calls the
3153 appropriate `sql-interactive-mode' wrapper for the current setting of
3157 *** sql.el supports the SQLite interpreter--call 'sql-sqlite'.
3162 *** New ffap commands and keybindings:
3164 C-x C-r (`ffap-read-only'),
3165 C-x C-v (`ffap-alternate-file'), C-x C-d (`ffap-list-directory'),
3166 C-x 4 r (`ffap-read-only-other-window'), C-x 4 d (`ffap-dired-other-window'),
3167 C-x 5 r (`ffap-read-only-other-frame'), C-x 5 d (`ffap-dired-other-frame').
3170 *** FFAP accepts wildcards in a file name by default.
3172 C-x C-f passes the file name to `find-file' with non-nil WILDCARDS
3173 argument, which visits multiple files, and C-x d passes it to `dired'.
3176 ** In skeleton.el, `-' marks the `skeleton-point' without interregion interaction.
3178 `@' has reverted to only setting `skeleton-positions' and no longer
3179 sets `skeleton-point'. Skeletons which used @ to mark
3180 `skeleton-point' independent of `_' should now use `-' instead. The
3181 updated `skeleton-insert' docstring explains these new features along
3182 with other details of skeleton construction.
3185 ** Hideshow mode changes
3187 *** New variable `hs-set-up-overlay' allows customization of the overlay
3188 used to effect hiding for hideshow minor mode. Integration with isearch
3189 handles the overlay property `display' specially, preserving it during
3190 temporary overlay showing in the course of an isearch operation.
3192 *** New variable `hs-allow-nesting' non-nil means that hiding a block does
3193 not discard the hidden state of any "internal" blocks; when the parent
3194 block is later shown, the internal blocks remain hidden. Default is nil.
3197 ** `hide-ifdef-mode' now uses overlays rather than selective-display
3198 to hide its text. This should be mostly transparent but slightly
3199 changes the behavior of motion commands like C-e and C-p.
3202 ** `partial-completion-mode' now handles partial completion on directory names.
3205 ** The type-break package now allows `type-break-file-name' to be nil
3206 and if so, doesn't store any data across sessions. This is handy if
3207 you don't want the `.type-break' file in your home directory or are
3208 annoyed by the need for interaction when you kill Emacs.
3211 ** `ps-print' can now print characters from the mule-unicode charsets.
3213 Printing text with characters from the mule-unicode-* sets works with
3214 `ps-print', provided that you have installed the appropriate BDF
3215 fonts. See the file INSTALL for URLs where you can find these fonts.
3218 ** New command `strokes-global-set-stroke-string'.
3219 This is like `strokes-global-set-stroke', but it allows you to bind
3220 the stroke directly to a string to insert. This is convenient for
3221 using strokes as an input method.
3223 ** Emacs server changes:
3226 *** You can have several Emacs servers on the same machine.
3228 % emacs --eval '(setq server-name "foo")' -f server-start &
3229 % emacs --eval '(setq server-name "bar")' -f server-start &
3230 % emacsclient -s foo file1
3231 % emacsclient -s bar file2
3234 *** The `emacsclient' command understands the options `--eval' and
3235 `--display' which tell Emacs respectively to evaluate the given Lisp
3236 expression and to use the given display when visiting files.
3239 *** User option `server-mode' can be used to start a server process.
3242 ** LDAP support now defaults to ldapsearch from OpenLDAP version 2.
3245 ** You can now disable pc-selection-mode after enabling it.
3247 M-x pc-selection-mode behaves like a proper minor mode, and with no
3248 argument it toggles the mode. Turning off PC-Selection mode restores
3249 the global key bindings that were replaced by turning on the mode.
3252 ** `uniquify-strip-common-suffix' tells uniquify to prefer
3253 `file|dir1' and `file|dir2' to `file|dir1/subdir' and `file|dir2/subdir'.
3256 ** Support for `magic cookie' standout modes has been removed.
3258 Emacs still works on terminals that require magic cookies in order to
3259 use standout mode, but they can no longer display mode-lines in
3263 ** The game `mpuz' is enhanced.
3265 `mpuz' now allows the 2nd factor not to have two identical digits. By
3266 default, all trivial operations involving whole lines are performed
3267 automatically. The game uses faces for better visual feedback.
3269 ** battery.el changes:
3272 *** display-battery-mode replaces display-battery.
3275 *** battery.el now works on recent versions of OS X.
3278 ** calculator.el now has radix grouping mode.
3280 To enable this, set `calculator-output-radix' non-nil. In this mode a
3281 separator character is used every few digits, making it easier to see
3282 byte boundries etc. For more info, see the documentation of the
3283 variable `calculator-radix-grouping-mode'.
3286 ** fast-lock.el and lazy-lock.el are obsolete. Use jit-lock.el instead.
3289 ** iso-acc.el is now obsolete. Use one of the latin input methods instead.
3292 ** cplus-md.el has been deleted.
3294 * Changes in Emacs 22.1 on non-free operating systems
3297 ** The HOME directory defaults to Application Data under the user profile.
3299 If you used a previous version of Emacs without setting the HOME
3300 environment variable and a `.emacs' was saved, then Emacs will continue
3301 using C:/ as the default HOME. But if you are installing Emacs afresh,
3302 the default location will be the "Application Data" (or similar
3303 localized name) subdirectory of your user profile. A typical location
3304 of this directory is "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data",
3305 where USERNAME is your user name.
3307 This change means that users can now have their own `.emacs' files on
3308 shared computers, and the default HOME directory is less likely to be
3309 read-only on computers that are administered by someone else.
3312 ** Passing resources on the command line now works on MS Windows.
3314 You can use --xrm to pass resource settings to Emacs, overriding any
3315 existing values. For example:
3317 emacs --xrm "Emacs.Background:red" --xrm "Emacs.Geometry:100x20"
3319 will start up Emacs on an initial frame of 100x20 with red background,
3320 irrespective of geometry or background setting on the Windows registry.
3323 ** On MS Windows, the "system caret" now follows the cursor.
3325 This enables Emacs to work better with programs that need to track
3326 the cursor, for example screen magnifiers and text to speech programs.
3329 ** Tooltips now work on MS Windows.
3331 See the Emacs 21.1 NEWS entry for tooltips for details.
3334 ** Images are now supported on MS Windows.
3336 PBM and XBM images are supported out of the box. Other image formats
3337 depend on external libraries. All of these libraries have been ported
3338 to Windows, and can be found in both source and binary form at
3339 http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. Note that libpng also depends on
3340 zlib, and tiff depends on the version of jpeg that it was compiled
3341 against. For additional information, see nt/INSTALL.
3344 ** Sound is now supported on MS Windows.
3346 WAV format is supported on all versions of Windows, other formats such
3347 as AU, AIFF and MP3 may be supported in the more recent versions of
3348 Windows, or when other software provides hooks into the system level
3349 sound support for those formats.
3352 ** Different shaped mouse pointers are supported on MS Windows.
3354 The mouse pointer changes shape depending on what is under the pointer.
3357 ** Pointing devices with more than 3 buttons are now supported on MS Windows.
3359 The new variable `w32-pass-extra-mouse-buttons-to-system' controls
3360 whether Emacs should handle the extra buttons itself (the default), or
3361 pass them to Windows to be handled with system-wide functions.
3364 ** Emacs takes note of colors defined in Control Panel on MS-Windows.
3366 The Control Panel defines some default colors for applications in much
3367 the same way as wildcard X Resources do on X. Emacs now adds these
3368 colors to the colormap prefixed by System (eg SystemMenu for the
3369 default Menu background, SystemMenuText for the foreground), and uses
3370 some of them to initialize some of the default faces.
3371 `list-colors-display' shows the list of System color names, in case
3372 you wish to use them in other faces.
3375 ** On MS Windows NT/W2K/XP, Emacs uses Unicode for clipboard operations.
3377 Those systems use Unicode internally, so this allows Emacs to share
3378 multilingual text with other applications. On other versions of
3379 MS Windows, Emacs now uses the appropriate locale coding-system, so
3380 the clipboard should work correctly for your local language without
3384 ** Running in a console window in Windows now uses the console size.
3386 Previous versions of Emacs erred on the side of having a usable Emacs
3387 through telnet, even though that was inconvenient if you use Emacs in
3388 a local console window with a scrollback buffer. The default value of
3389 w32-use-full-screen-buffer is now nil, which favours local console
3390 windows. Recent versions of Windows telnet also work well with this
3391 setting. If you are using an older telnet server then Emacs detects
3392 that the console window dimensions that are reported are not sane, and
3393 defaults to 80x25. If you use such a telnet server regularly at a size
3394 other than 80x25, you can still manually set
3395 w32-use-full-screen-buffer to t.
3398 ** On Mac OS, `keyboard-coding-system' changes based on the keyboard script.
3401 ** The variable `mac-keyboard-text-encoding' and the constants
3402 `kTextEncodingMacRoman', `kTextEncodingISOLatin1', and
3403 `kTextEncodingISOLatin2' are obsolete.
3405 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 22.1
3408 ** The variables post-command-idle-hook and post-command-idle-delay have
3409 been removed. Use run-with-idle-timer instead.
3412 ** `suppress-keymap' now works by remapping `self-insert-command' to
3413 the command `undefined'. (In earlier Emacs versions, it used
3414 `substitute-key-definition' to rebind self inserting characters to
3418 ** Mode line display ignores text properties as well as the
3419 :propertize and :eval forms in the value of a variable whose
3420 `risky-local-variable' property is nil.
3423 ** Support for Mocklisp has been removed.
3425 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 22.1
3427 ** General Lisp changes:
3429 *** The function `expt' handles negative exponents differently.
3430 The value for `(expt A B)', if both A and B are integers and B is
3431 negative, is now a float. For example: (expt 2 -2) => 0.25.
3434 *** The function `eql' is now available without requiring the CL package.
3437 *** `makehash' is now obsolete. Use `make-hash-table' instead.
3440 *** `add-to-list' takes an optional third argument, APPEND.
3442 If APPEND is non-nil, the new element gets added at the end of the
3443 list instead of at the beginning. This change actually occurred in
3444 Emacs 21.1, but was not documented then.
3447 *** New function `add-to-ordered-list' is like `add-to-list' but
3448 associates a numeric ordering of each element added to the list.
3451 *** New function `copy-tree' makes a copy of a tree.
3453 It recursively copyies through both CARs and CDRs.
3456 *** New function `delete-dups' deletes `equal' duplicate elements from a list.
3458 It modifies the list destructively, like `delete'. Of several `equal'
3459 occurrences of an element in the list, the one that's kept is the
3463 *** New function `rassq-delete-all'.
3465 (rassq-delete-all VALUE ALIST) deletes, from ALIST, each element whose
3466 CDR is `eq' to the specified value.
3469 *** The function `number-sequence' makes a list of equally-separated numbers.
3471 For instance, (number-sequence 4 9) returns (4 5 6 7 8 9). By
3472 default, the separation is 1, but you can specify a different
3473 separation as the third argument. (number-sequence 1.5 6 2) returns
3477 *** New variables `most-positive-fixnum' and `most-negative-fixnum'.
3479 They hold the largest and smallest possible integer values.
3482 *** Minor change in the function `format'.
3484 Some flags that were accepted but not implemented (such as "*") are no
3488 *** Functions `get' and `plist-get' no longer give errors for bad plists.
3490 They return nil for a malformed property list or if the list is
3494 *** New functions `lax-plist-get' and `lax-plist-put'.
3496 They are like `plist-get' and `plist-put', except that they compare
3497 the property name using `equal' rather than `eq'.
3500 *** New variable `print-continuous-numbering'.
3502 When this is non-nil, successive calls to print functions use a single
3503 numbering scheme for circular structure references. This is only
3504 relevant when `print-circle' is non-nil.
3506 When you bind `print-continuous-numbering' to t, you should
3507 also bind `print-number-table' to nil.
3510 *** New function `macroexpand-all' expands all macros in a form.
3512 It is similar to the Common-Lisp function of the same name.
3513 One difference is that it guarantees to return the original argument
3514 if no expansion is done, which can be tested using `eq'.
3517 *** The function `atan' now accepts an optional second argument.
3519 When called with 2 arguments, as in `(atan Y X)', `atan' returns the
3520 angle in radians between the vector [X, Y] and the X axis. (This is
3521 equivalent to the standard C library function `atan2'.)
3524 *** A function or macro's doc string can now specify the calling pattern.
3526 You put this info in the doc string's last line. It should be
3527 formatted so as to match the regexp "\n\n(fn .*)\\'". If you don't
3528 specify this explicitly, Emacs determines it from the actual argument
3529 names. Usually that default is right, but not always.
3532 *** New macro `with-local-quit' temporarily allows quitting.
3534 A quit inside the body of `with-local-quit' is caught by the
3535 `with-local-quit' form itself, but another quit will happen later once
3536 the code that has inhibitted quitting exits.
3538 This is for use around potentially blocking or long-running code
3539 inside timer functions and `post-command-hook' functions.
3542 *** New macro `define-obsolete-function-alias'.
3544 This combines `defalias' and `make-obsolete'.
3547 *** New function `unsafep' determines whether a Lisp form is safe.
3549 It returns nil if the given Lisp form can't possibly do anything
3550 dangerous; otherwise it returns a reason why the form might be unsafe
3551 (calls unknown function, alters global variable, etc).
3553 *** `list-faces-display' takes an optional argument, REGEXP.
3555 If it is non-nil, the function lists only faces matching this regexp.
3557 ** Lisp code indentation features:
3560 *** The `defmacro' form can contain indentation and edebug declarations.
3562 These declarations specify how to indent the macro calls in Lisp mode
3563 and how to debug them with Edebug. You write them like this:
3565 (defmacro NAME LAMBDA-LIST [DOC-STRING] [DECLARATION ...] ...)
3567 DECLARATION is a list `(declare DECLARATION-SPECIFIER ...)'. The
3568 possible declaration specifiers are:
3571 Set NAME's `lisp-indent-function' property to INDENT.
3574 Set NAME's `edebug-form-spec' property to DEBUG. (This is
3575 equivalent to writing a `def-edebug-spec' for the macro,
3576 but this is cleaner.)
3579 *** cl-indent now allows customization of Indentation of backquoted forms.
3581 See the new user option `lisp-backquote-indentation'.
3584 *** cl-indent now handles indentation of simple and extended `loop' forms.
3586 The new user options `lisp-loop-keyword-indentation',
3587 `lisp-loop-forms-indentation', and `lisp-simple-loop-indentation' can
3588 be used to customize the indentation of keywords and forms in loop
3592 ** Variable aliases:
3594 *** New function: defvaralias ALIAS-VAR BASE-VAR [DOCSTRING]
3596 This function defines the symbol ALIAS-VAR as a variable alias for
3597 symbol BASE-VAR. This means that retrieving the value of ALIAS-VAR
3598 returns the value of BASE-VAR, and changing the value of ALIAS-VAR
3599 changes the value of BASE-VAR.
3601 DOCSTRING, if present, is the documentation for ALIAS-VAR; else it has
3602 the same documentation as BASE-VAR.
3604 *** New function: indirect-variable VARIABLE
3606 This function returns the variable at the end of the chain of aliases
3607 of VARIABLE. If VARIABLE is not a symbol, or if VARIABLE is not
3608 defined as an alias, the function returns VARIABLE.
3610 It might be noteworthy that variables aliases work for all kinds of
3611 variables, including buffer-local and frame-local variables.
3614 *** The macro `define-obsolete-variable-alias' combines `defvaralias' and
3615 `make-obsolete-variable'.
3617 ** defcustom changes:
3620 *** The new customization type `float' requires a floating point number.
3625 *** The escape sequence \s is now interpreted as a SPACE character.
3627 Exception: In a character constant, if it is followed by a `-' in a
3628 character constant (e.g. ?\s-A), it is still interpreted as the super
3629 modifier. In strings, \s is always interpreted as a space.
3632 *** A hex escape in a string constant forces the string to be multibyte.
3635 *** An octal escape in a string constant forces the string to be unibyte.
3638 *** `split-string' now includes null substrings in the returned list if
3639 the optional argument SEPARATORS is non-nil and there are matches for
3640 SEPARATORS at the beginning or end of the string. If SEPARATORS is
3641 nil, or if the new optional third argument OMIT-NULLS is non-nil, all
3642 empty matches are omitted from the returned list.
3645 *** New function `string-to-multibyte' converts a unibyte string to a
3646 multibyte string with the same individual character codes.
3649 *** New function `substring-no-properties' returns a substring without
3653 *** The new function `assoc-string' replaces `assoc-ignore-case' and
3654 `assoc-ignore-representation', which are still available, but have
3655 been declared obsolete.
3658 ** Displaying warnings to the user.
3660 See the functions `warn' and `display-warning', or the Lisp Manual.
3661 If you want to be sure the warning will not be overlooked, this
3662 facility is much better than using `message', since it displays
3663 warnings in a separate window.
3666 ** Progress reporters.
3668 These provide a simple and uniform way for commands to present
3669 progress messages for the user.
3671 See the new functions `make-progress-reporter',
3672 `progress-reporter-update', `progress-reporter-force-update',
3673 `progress-reporter-done', and `dotimes-with-progress-reporter'.
3675 ** Buffer positions:
3678 *** Function `compute-motion' now calculates the usable window
3679 width if the WIDTH argument is nil. If the TOPOS argument is nil,
3680 the usable window height and width is used.
3683 *** The `line-move', `scroll-up', and `scroll-down' functions will now
3684 modify the window vscroll to scroll through display rows that are
3685 taller that the height of the window, for example in the presence of
3686 large images. To disable this feature, bind the new variable
3687 `auto-window-vscroll' to nil.
3690 *** The argument to `forward-word', `backward-word' is optional.
3695 *** Argument to `forward-to-indentation' and `backward-to-indentation' is optional.
3700 *** New function `mouse-on-link-p' test if a position is in a clickable link.
3702 This is the function used by the new `mouse-1-click-follows-link'
3706 *** New function `line-number-at-pos' returns the line number of a position.
3708 It an optional buffer position argument that defaults to point.
3711 *** `field-beginning' and `field-end' take new optional argument, LIMIT.
3713 This argument tells them not to search beyond LIMIT. Instead they
3714 give up and return LIMIT.
3717 *** Function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now returns the pixel coordinates
3718 and partial visiblity state of the corresponding row, if the PARTIALLY
3722 *** New functions `posn-at-point' and `posn-at-x-y' return
3723 click-event-style position information for a given visible buffer
3724 position or for a given window pixel coordinate.
3726 ** Text modification:
3729 *** The new function `insert-for-yank' normally works like `insert', but
3730 removes the text properties in the `yank-excluded-properties' list
3731 and handles the `yank-handler' text property.
3734 *** The new function `insert-buffer-substring-as-yank' is like
3735 `insert-for-yank' except that it gets the text from another buffer as
3736 in `insert-buffer-substring'.
3739 *** The new function `insert-buffer-substring-no-properties' is like
3740 `insert-buffer-substring', but removes all text properties from the
3744 *** The new function `filter-buffer-substring' extracts a buffer
3745 substring, passes it through a set of filter functions, and returns
3746 the filtered substring. Use it instead of `buffer-substring' or
3747 `delete-and-extract-region' when copying text into a user-accessible
3748 data structure, such as the kill-ring, X clipboard, or a register.
3750 The list of filter function is specified by the new variable
3751 `buffer-substring-filters'. For example, Longlines mode adds to
3752 `buffer-substring-filters' to remove soft newlines from the copied
3756 *** Function `translate-region' accepts also a char-table as TABLE
3760 *** The new translation table `translation-table-for-input'
3761 is used for customizing self-insertion. The character to
3762 be inserted is translated through it.
3767 The new function `text-clone-create'. Text clones are chunks of text
3768 that are kept identical by transparently propagating changes from one
3772 *** The function `insert-string' is now obsolete.
3777 *** In determining an adaptive fill prefix, Emacs now tries the function in
3778 `adaptive-fill-function' _before_ matching the buffer line against
3779 `adaptive-fill-regexp' rather than _after_ it.
3782 ** Atomic change groups.
3784 To perform some changes in the current buffer "atomically" so that
3785 they either all succeed or are all undone, use `atomic-change-group'
3786 around the code that makes changes. For instance:
3788 (atomic-change-group
3790 (delete-region x y))
3792 If an error (or other nonlocal exit) occurs inside the body of
3793 `atomic-change-group', it unmakes all the changes in that buffer that
3794 were during the execution of the body. The change group has no effect
3795 on any other buffers--any such changes remain.
3797 If you need something more sophisticated, you can directly call the
3798 lower-level functions that `atomic-change-group' uses. Here is how.
3800 To set up a change group for one buffer, call `prepare-change-group'.
3801 Specify the buffer as argument; it defaults to the current buffer.
3802 This function returns a "handle" for the change group. You must save
3803 the handle to activate the change group and then finish it.
3805 Before you change the buffer again, you must activate the change
3806 group. Pass the handle to `activate-change-group' afterward to
3809 After you make the changes, you must finish the change group. You can
3810 either accept the changes or cancel them all. Call
3811 `accept-change-group' to accept the changes in the group as final;
3812 call `cancel-change-group' to undo them all.
3814 You should use `unwind-protect' to make sure the group is always
3815 finished. The call to `activate-change-group' should be inside the
3816 `unwind-protect', in case the user types C-g just after it runs.
3817 (This is one reason why `prepare-change-group' and
3818 `activate-change-group' are separate functions.) Once you finish the
3819 group, don't use the handle again--don't try to finish the same group
3822 To make a multibuffer change group, call `prepare-change-group' once
3823 for each buffer you want to cover, then use `nconc' to combine the
3824 returned values, like this:
3826 (nconc (prepare-change-group buffer-1)
3827 (prepare-change-group buffer-2))
3829 You can then activate the multibuffer change group with a single call
3830 to `activate-change-group', and finish it with a single call to
3831 `accept-change-group' or `cancel-change-group'.
3833 Nested use of several change groups for the same buffer works as you
3834 would expect. Non-nested use of change groups for the same buffer
3835 will lead to undesirable results, so don't let it happen; the first
3836 change group you start for any given buffer should be the last one
3839 ** Buffer-related changes:
3842 *** `list-buffers-noselect' now takes an additional argument, BUFFER-LIST.
3844 If it is non-nil, it specifies which buffers to list.
3847 *** `kill-buffer-hook' is now a permanent local.
3850 *** The new function `buffer-local-value' returns the buffer-local
3851 binding of VARIABLE (a symbol) in buffer BUFFER. If VARIABLE does not
3852 have a buffer-local binding in buffer BUFFER, it returns the default
3853 value of VARIABLE instead.
3855 *** The function `frame-or-buffer-changed-p' now lets you maintain
3856 various status records in parallel.
3858 It take a variable (a symbol) as argument. If the variable is non-nil,
3859 then its value should be a vector installed previously by
3860 `frame-or-buffer-changed-p'. If the frame names, buffer names, buffer
3861 order, or their read-only or modified flags have changed, since the
3862 time the vector's contents were recorded by a previous call to
3863 `frame-or-buffer-changed-p', then the function returns t. Otherwise
3866 On the first call to `frame-or-buffer-changed-p', the variable's
3867 value should be nil. `frame-or-buffer-changed-p' stores a suitable
3868 vector into the variable and returns t.
3870 If the variable is itself nil, then `frame-or-buffer-changed-p' uses,
3871 for compatibility, an internal variable which exists only for this
3875 *** The function `read-buffer' follows the convention for reading from
3876 the minibuffer with a default value: if DEF is non-nil, the minibuffer
3877 prompt provided in PROMPT is edited to show the default value provided
3878 in DEF before the terminal colon and space.
3880 ** Local variables lists:
3883 *** Text properties in local variables.
3885 A file local variables list cannot specify a string with text
3886 properties--any specified text properties are discarded.
3889 *** The variable `safe-local-eval-forms' specifies a list of forms that
3890 are ok to evaluate when they appear in an `eval' local variables
3891 specification. Normally Emacs asks for confirmation before evaluating
3892 such a form, but if the form appears in this list, no confirmation is
3896 *** If a function has a non-nil `safe-local-eval-function' property,
3897 that means it is ok to evaluate some calls to that function when it
3898 appears in an `eval' local variables specification. If the property
3899 is t, then any form calling that function with constant arguments is
3900 ok. If the property is a function or list of functions, they are called
3901 with the form as argument, and if any returns t, the form is ok to call.
3903 If the form is not "ok to call", that means Emacs asks for
3904 confirmation as before.
3906 ** Searching and matching changes:
3909 *** New function `looking-back' checks whether a regular expression matches
3910 the text before point. Specifying the LIMIT argument bounds how far
3911 back the match can start; this is a way to keep it from taking too long.
3914 *** The new variable `search-spaces-regexp' controls how to search
3915 for spaces in a regular expression. If it is non-nil, it should be a
3916 regular expression, and any series of spaces stands for that regular
3917 expression. If it is nil, spaces stand for themselves.
3919 Spaces inside of constructs such as `[..]' and inside loops such as
3920 `*', `+', and `?' are never replaced with `search-spaces-regexp'.
3923 *** New regular expression operators, `\_<' and `\_>'.
3925 These match the beginning and end of a symbol. A symbol is a
3926 non-empty sequence of either word or symbol constituent characters, as
3927 specified by the syntax table.
3930 *** rx.el has new corresponding `symbol-end' and `symbol-start' elements.
3933 *** `skip-chars-forward' and `skip-chars-backward' now handle
3934 character classes such as `[:alpha:]', along with individual
3935 characters and ranges.
3938 *** In `replace-match', the replacement text no longer inherits
3939 properties from surrounding text.
3942 *** The list returned by `(match-data t)' now has the buffer as a final
3943 element, if the last match was on a buffer. `set-match-data'
3944 accepts such a list for restoring the match state.
3947 *** Functions `match-data' and `set-match-data' now have an optional
3948 argument `reseat'. When non-nil, all markers in the match data list
3949 passed to these function will be reseated to point to nowhere.
3952 *** The default value of `sentence-end' is now defined using the new
3953 variable `sentence-end-without-space', which contains such characters
3954 that end a sentence without following spaces.
3956 The function `sentence-end' should be used to obtain the value of the
3957 variable `sentence-end'. If the variable `sentence-end' is nil, then
3958 this function returns the regexp constructed from the variables
3959 `sentence-end-without-period', `sentence-end-double-space' and
3960 `sentence-end-without-space'.
3965 *** `buffer-undo-list' can allows programmable elements.
3967 These elements have the form (apply FUNNAME . ARGS), where FUNNAME is
3968 a symbol other than t or nil. That stands for a high-level change
3969 that should be undone by evaluating (apply FUNNAME ARGS).
3971 These entries can also have the form (apply DELTA BEG END FUNNAME . ARGS)
3972 which indicates that the change which took place was limited to the
3973 range BEG...END and increased the buffer size by DELTA.
3976 *** If the buffer's undo list for the current command gets longer than
3977 `undo-outer-limit', garbage collection empties it. This is to prevent
3978 it from using up the available memory and choking Emacs.
3981 ** New `yank-handler' text property can be used to control how
3982 previously killed text on the kill ring is reinserted.
3984 The value of the `yank-handler' property must be a list with one to four
3985 elements with the following format:
3986 (FUNCTION PARAM NOEXCLUDE UNDO).
3988 The `insert-for-yank' function looks for a yank-handler property on
3989 the first character on its string argument (typically the first
3990 element on the kill-ring). If a `yank-handler' property is found,
3991 the normal behavior of `insert-for-yank' is modified in various ways:
3993 When FUNCTION is present and non-nil, it is called instead of `insert'
3994 to insert the string. FUNCTION takes one argument--the object to insert.
3995 If PARAM is present and non-nil, it replaces STRING as the object
3996 passed to FUNCTION (or `insert'); for example, if FUNCTION is
3997 `yank-rectangle', PARAM should be a list of strings to insert as a
3999 If NOEXCLUDE is present and non-nil, the normal removal of the
4000 `yank-excluded-properties' is not performed; instead FUNCTION is
4001 responsible for removing those properties. This may be necessary
4002 if FUNCTION adjusts point before or after inserting the object.
4003 If UNDO is present and non-nil, it is a function that will be called
4004 by `yank-pop' to undo the insertion of the current object. It is
4005 called with two arguments, the start and end of the current region.
4006 FUNCTION can set `yank-undo-function' to override the UNDO value.
4008 *** The functions `kill-new', `kill-append', and `kill-region' now have an
4009 optional argument to specify the `yank-handler' text property to put on
4012 *** The function `yank-pop' will now use a non-nil value of the variable
4013 `yank-undo-function' (instead of `delete-region') to undo the previous
4014 `yank' or `yank-pop' command (or a call to `insert-for-yank'). The function
4015 `insert-for-yank' automatically sets that variable according to the UNDO
4016 element of the string argument's `yank-handler' text property if present.
4018 *** The function `insert-for-yank' now supports strings where the
4019 `yank-handler' property does not span the first character of the
4020 string. The old behavior is available if you call
4021 `insert-for-yank-1' instead.
4023 ** Syntax table changes:
4026 *** The macro `with-syntax-table' no longer copies the syntax table.
4029 *** The new function `syntax-after' returns the syntax code
4030 of the character after a specified buffer position, taking account
4031 of text properties as well as the character code.
4034 *** `syntax-class' extracts the class of a syntax code (as returned
4038 *** The new function `syntax-ppss' rovides an efficient way to find the
4039 current syntactic context at point.
4041 ** File operation changes:
4044 *** New vars `exec-suffixes' and `load-suffixes' used when
4045 searching for an executable or an Emacs Lisp file.
4048 *** The new primitive `set-file-times' sets a file's access and
4049 modification times. Magic file name handlers can handle this
4053 *** The new function `file-remote-p' tests a file name and returns
4054 non-nil if it specifies a remote file (one that Emacs accesses using
4055 its own special methods and not directly through the file system).
4056 The value in that case is an identifier for the remote file system.
4059 *** `buffer-auto-save-file-format' is the new name for what was
4060 formerly called `auto-save-file-format'. It is now a permanent local.
4063 *** Functions `file-name-sans-extension' and `file-name-extension' now
4064 ignore the leading dots in file names, so that file names such as
4065 `.emacs' are treated as extensionless.
4068 *** `copy-file' now takes an additional option arg MUSTBENEW.
4070 This argument works like the MUSTBENEW argument of write-file.
4073 *** `visited-file-modtime' and `calendar-time-from-absolute' now return
4074 a list of two integers, instead of a cons.
4077 *** `file-chase-links' now takes an optional second argument LIMIT which
4078 specifies the maximum number of links to chase through. If after that
4079 many iterations the file name obtained is still a symbolic link,
4080 `file-chase-links' returns it anyway.
4083 *** The new hook `before-save-hook' is invoked by `basic-save-buffer'
4084 before saving buffers. This allows packages to perform various final
4085 tasks, for example; it can be used by the copyright package to make
4086 sure saved files have the current year in any copyright headers.
4089 *** If `buffer-save-without-query' is non-nil in some buffer,
4090 `save-some-buffers' will always save that buffer without asking (if
4094 *** New function `locate-file' searches for a file in a list of directories.
4095 `locate-file' accepts a name of a file to search (a string), and two
4096 lists: a list of directories to search in and a list of suffixes to
4097 try; typical usage might use `exec-path' and `load-path' for the list
4098 of directories, and `exec-suffixes' and `load-suffixes' for the list
4099 of suffixes. The function also accepts a predicate argument to
4100 further filter candidate files.
4102 One advantage of using this function is that the list of suffixes in
4103 `exec-suffixes' is OS-dependant, so this function will find
4104 executables without polluting Lisp code with OS dependancies.
4107 *** The precedence of file name handlers has been changed.
4109 Instead of choosing the first handler that matches,
4110 `find-file-name-handler' now gives precedence to a file name handler
4111 that matches nearest the end of the file name. More precisely, the
4112 handler whose (match-beginning 0) is the largest is chosen. In case
4113 of ties, the old "first matched" rule applies.
4116 *** A file name handler can declare which operations it handles.
4118 You do this by putting an `operation' property on the handler name
4119 symbol. The property value should be a list of the operations that
4120 the handler really handles. It won't be called for any other
4123 This is useful for autoloaded handlers, to prevent them from being
4124 autoloaded when not really necessary.
4127 *** The function `make-auto-save-file-name' is now handled by file
4128 name handlers. This will be exploited for remote files mainly.
4133 *** An interactive specification can now use the code letter 'U' to get
4134 the up-event that was discarded in case the last key sequence read for a
4135 previous `k' or `K' argument was a down-event; otherwise nil is used.
4138 *** The new interactive-specification `G' reads a file name
4139 much like `F', but if the input is a directory name (even defaulted),
4140 it returns just the directory name.
4143 *** Functions `y-or-n-p', `read-char', `read-key-sequence' and the like, that
4144 display a prompt but don't use the minibuffer, now display the prompt
4145 using the text properties (esp. the face) of the prompt string.
4148 *** (while-no-input BODY...) runs BODY, but only so long as no input
4149 arrives. If the user types or clicks anything, BODY stops as if a
4150 quit had occurred. `while-no-input' returns the value of BODY, if BODY
4151 finishes. It returns nil if BODY was aborted by a quit, and t if
4152 BODY was aborted by arrival of input.
4154 ** Minibuffer changes:
4157 *** The new function `minibufferp' returns non-nil if its optional
4158 buffer argument is a minibuffer. If the argument is omitted, it
4159 defaults to the current buffer.
4162 *** New function `minibuffer-selected-window' returns the window which
4163 was selected when entering the minibuffer.
4166 *** `read-from-minibuffer' now accepts an additional argument KEEP-ALL
4167 saying to put all inputs in the history list, even empty ones.
4170 *** The `read-file-name' function now takes an additional argument which
4171 specifies a predicate which the file name read must satify. The
4172 new variable `read-file-name-predicate' contains the predicate argument
4173 while reading the file name from the minibuffer; the predicate in this
4174 variable is used by read-file-name-internal to filter the completion list.
4177 *** The new variable `read-file-name-function' can be used by Lisp code
4178 to override the built-in `read-file-name' function.
4181 *** The new variable `read-file-name-completion-ignore-case' specifies
4182 whether completion ignores case when reading a file name with the
4183 `read-file-name' function.
4186 *** The new function `read-directory-name' for reading a directory name.
4188 It is like `read-file-name' except that the defaulting works better
4189 for directories, and completion inside it shows only directories.
4191 ** Completion changes:
4194 *** The functions `all-completions' and `try-completion' now accept lists
4195 of strings as well as hash-tables additionally to alists, obarrays
4196 and functions. Furthermore, the function `test-completion' is now
4197 exported to Lisp. The keys in alists and hash tables can be either
4198 strings or symbols, which are automatically converted with to strings.
4201 *** The new macro `dynamic-completion-table' supports using functions
4202 as a dynamic completion table.
4204 (dynamic-completion-table FUN)
4206 FUN is called with one argument, the string for which completion is required,
4207 and it should return an alist containing all the intended possible
4208 completions. This alist can be a full list of possible completions so that FUN
4209 can ignore the value of its argument. If completion is performed in the
4210 minibuffer, FUN will be called in the buffer from which the minibuffer was
4211 entered. `dynamic-completion-table' then computes the completion.
4214 *** The new macro `lazy-completion-table' initializes a variable
4215 as a lazy completion table.
4217 (lazy-completion-table VAR FUN &rest ARGS)
4219 If the completion table VAR is used for the first time (e.g., by passing VAR
4220 as an argument to `try-completion'), the function FUN is called with arguments
4221 ARGS. FUN must return the completion table that will be stored in VAR. If
4222 completion is requested in the minibuffer, FUN will be called in the buffer
4223 from which the minibuffer was entered. The return value of
4224 `lazy-completion-table' must be used to initialize the value of VAR.
4227 ** Enhancements to keymaps.
4229 *** Cleaner way to enter key sequences.
4231 You can enter a constant key sequence in a more natural format, the
4232 same one used for saving keyboard macros, using the macro `kbd'. For
4235 (kbd "C-x C-f") => "\^x\^f"
4237 *** Interactive commands can be remapped through keymaps.
4239 This is an alternative to using `defadvice' or `substitute-key-definition'
4240 to modify the behavior of a key binding using the normal keymap
4241 binding and lookup functionality.
4243 When a key sequence is bound to a command, and that command is
4244 remapped to another command, that command is run instead of the
4248 Suppose that minor mode `my-mode' has defined the commands
4249 `my-kill-line' and `my-kill-word', and it wants C-k (and any other key
4250 bound to `kill-line') to run the command `my-kill-line' instead of
4251 `kill-line', and likewise it wants to run `my-kill-word' instead of
4254 Instead of rebinding C-k and the other keys in the minor mode map,
4255 command remapping allows you to directly map `kill-line' into
4256 `my-kill-line' and `kill-word' into `my-kill-word' using `define-key':
4258 (define-key my-mode-map [remap kill-line] 'my-kill-line)
4259 (define-key my-mode-map [remap kill-word] 'my-kill-word)
4261 When `my-mode' is enabled, its minor mode keymap is enabled too. So
4262 when the user types C-k, that runs the command `my-kill-line'.
4264 Only one level of remapping is supported. In the above example, this
4265 means that if `my-kill-line' is remapped to `other-kill', then C-k still
4266 runs `my-kill-line'.
4268 The following changes have been made to provide command remapping:
4270 - Command remappings are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
4271 `remap', i.e. `(define-key MAP [remap CMD] DEF)' remaps command CMD
4272 to definition DEF in keymap MAP. The definition is not limited to
4273 another command; it can be anything accepted for a normal binding.
4275 - The new function `command-remapping' returns the binding for a
4276 remapped command in the current keymaps, or nil if not remapped.
4278 - `key-binding' now remaps interactive commands unless the optional
4279 third argument NO-REMAP is non-nil.
4281 - `where-is-internal' now returns nil for a remapped command (e.g.
4282 `kill-line', when `my-mode' is enabled), and the actual key binding for
4283 the command it is remapped to (e.g. C-k for my-kill-line).
4284 It also has a new optional fifth argument, NO-REMAP, which inhibits
4285 remapping if non-nil (e.g. it returns "C-k" for `kill-line', and
4286 "<kill-line>" for `my-kill-line').
4288 - The new variable `this-original-command' contains the original
4289 command before remapping. It is equal to `this-command' when the
4290 command was not remapped.
4292 *** If text has a `keymap' property, that keymap takes precedence
4293 over minor mode keymaps.
4295 *** The `keymap' property now also works at the ends of overlays and
4296 text properties, according to their stickiness. This also means that it
4297 works with empty overlays. The same hold for the `local-map' property.
4299 *** Dense keymaps now handle inheritance correctly.
4301 Previously a dense keymap would hide all of the simple-char key
4302 bindings of the parent keymap.
4304 *** `define-key-after' now accepts keys longer than 1.
4306 *** New function `current-active-maps' returns a list of currently
4309 *** New function `describe-buffer-bindings' inserts the list of all
4310 defined keys and their definitions.
4312 *** New function `keymap-prompt' returns the prompt string of a keymap.
4314 *** (map-keymap FUNCTION KEYMAP) applies the function to each binding
4317 *** New variable `emulation-mode-map-alists'.
4319 Lisp packages using many minor mode keymaps can now maintain their own
4320 keymap alist separate from `minor-mode-map-alist' by adding their
4321 keymap alist to this list.
4326 *** The new function `copy-abbrev-table' copies an abbrev table.
4328 It returns a new abbrev table that is a copy of a given abbrev table.
4331 *** `define-abbrev' now accepts an optional argument SYSTEM-FLAG.
4333 If non-nil, this marks the abbrev as a "system" abbrev, which means
4334 that it won't be stored in the user's abbrevs file if he saves the
4335 abbrevs. Major modes that predefine some abbrevs should always
4339 ** Enhancements to process support
4341 *** Function `list-processes' now has an optional argument; if non-nil,
4342 it lists only the processes whose query-on-exit flag is set.
4344 *** New fns `set-process-query-on-exit-flag' and `process-query-on-exit-flag'.
4346 These replace the old function `process-kill-without-query'. That
4347 function is still supported, but new code should use the new
4350 *** Function `signal-process' now accepts a process object or process
4351 name in addition to a process id to identify the signaled process.
4353 *** Processes now have an associated property list where programs can
4354 maintain process state and other per-process related information.
4356 Use the new functions `process-get' and `process-put' to access, add,
4357 and modify elements on this property list. Use the new functions
4358 `process-plist' and `set-process-plist' to access and replace the
4359 entire property list of a process.
4361 *** Function `accept-process-output' has a new optional fourth arg
4362 JUST-THIS-ONE. If non-nil, only output from the specified process
4363 is handled, suspending output from other processes. If value is an
4364 integer, also inhibit running timers. This feature is generally not
4365 recommended, but may be necessary for specific applications, such as
4368 *** Adaptive read buffering of subprocess output.
4370 On some systems, when emacs reads the output from a subprocess, the
4371 output data is read in very small blocks, potentially resulting in
4372 very poor performance. This behavior can be remedied to some extent
4373 by setting the new variable `process-adaptive-read-buffering' to a
4374 non-nil value (the default), as it will automatically delay reading
4375 from such processes, to allowing them to produce more output before
4376 emacs tries to read it.
4378 *** The new function `call-process-shell-command'.
4380 This executes a shell command synchronously in a separate process.
4382 *** The new function `process-file' is similar to `call-process', but
4383 obeys file handlers. The file handler is chosen based on
4384 `default-directory'.
4386 *** A process filter function gets the output as multibyte string
4387 if the process specifies t for its filter's multibyteness.
4389 That multibyteness is decided by the value of
4390 `default-enable-multibyte-characters' when the process is created, and
4391 you can change it later with `set-process-filter-multibyte'.
4393 *** The new function `set-process-filter-multibyte' sets the
4394 multibyteness of the strings passed to the process's filter.
4396 *** The new function `process-filter-multibyte-p' returns the
4397 multibyteness of the strings passed to the process's filter.
4399 *** If a process's coding system is `raw-text' or `no-conversion' and its
4400 buffer is multibyte, the output of the process is at first converted
4401 to multibyte by `string-to-multibyte' then inserted in the buffer.
4402 Previously, it was converted to multibyte by `string-as-multibyte',
4403 which was not compatible with the behavior of file reading.
4406 ** Enhanced networking support.
4408 *** The new `make-network-process' function makes network connections.
4409 It allows opening of stream and datagram connections to a server, as well as
4410 create a stream or datagram server inside emacs.
4412 - A server is started using :server t arg.
4413 - Datagram connection is selected using :type 'datagram arg.
4414 - A server can open on a random port using :service t arg.
4415 - Local sockets are supported using :family 'local arg.
4416 - Non-blocking connect is supported using :nowait t arg.
4417 - The process' property list can be initialized using :plist PLIST arg;
4418 a copy of the server process' property list is automatically inherited
4419 by new client processes created to handle incoming connections.
4421 To test for the availability of a given feature, use featurep like this:
4422 (featurep 'make-network-process '(:type datagram))
4424 *** The old `open-network-stream' now uses `make-network-process'.
4426 *** New functions `process-datagram-address', `set-process-datagram-address'.
4428 These functions are used with datagram-based network processes to get
4429 and set the current address of the remote partner.
4431 *** New function `format-network-address'.
4433 This function reformats the Lisp representation of a network address
4434 to a printable string. For example, an IP address A.B.C.D and port
4435 number P is represented as a five element vector [A B C D P], and the
4436 printable string returned for this vector is "A.B.C.D:P". See the doc
4437 string for other formatting options.
4439 *** `process-contact' has an optional KEY argument.
4441 Depending on this argument, you can get the complete list of network
4442 process properties or a specific property. Using :local or :remote as
4443 the KEY, you get the address of the local or remote end-point.
4445 An Inet address is represented as a 5 element vector, where the first
4446 4 elements contain the IP address and the fifth is the port number.
4448 *** New functions `stop-process' and `continue-process'.
4450 These functions stop and restart communication through a network
4451 connection. For a server process, no connections are accepted in the
4452 stopped state. For a client process, no input is received in the
4455 *** New function `network-interface-list'.
4457 This function returns a list of network interface names and their
4458 current network addresses.
4460 *** New function `network-interface-info'.
4462 This function returns the network address, hardware address, current
4463 status, and other information about a specific network interface.
4465 *** Deleting a network process with `delete-process' calls the sentinel.
4467 The status message passed to the sentinel for a deleted network
4468 process is "deleted". The message passed to the sentinel when the
4469 connection is closed by the remote peer has been changed to
4470 "connection broken by remote peer".
4472 ** Using window objects:
4475 *** New function `window-body-height'.
4477 This is like `window-height' but does not count the mode line or the
4481 *** New function `window-body-height'.
4483 This is like `window-height' but does not count the mode line
4487 *** You can now make a window as short as one line.
4489 A window that is just one line tall does not display either a mode
4490 line or a header line, even if the variables `mode-line-format' and
4491 `header-line-format' call for them. A window that is two lines tall
4492 cannot display both a mode line and a header line at once; if the
4493 variables call for both, only the mode line actually appears.
4496 *** The new function `window-inside-edges' returns the edges of the
4497 actual text portion of the window, not including the scroll bar or
4498 divider line, the fringes, the display margins, the header line and
4502 *** The new functions `window-pixel-edges' and `window-inside-pixel-edges'
4503 return window edges in units of pixels, rather than columns and lines.
4506 *** The new macro `with-selected-window' temporarily switches the
4507 selected window without impacting the order of `buffer-list'.
4508 It saves and restores the current buffer, too.
4511 *** `select-window' takes an optional second argument NORECORD.
4513 This is like `switch-to-buffer'.
4516 *** `save-selected-window' now saves and restores the selected window
4517 of every frame. This way, it restores everything that can be changed
4518 by calling `select-window'. It also saves and restores the current
4522 *** `set-window-buffer' has an optional argument KEEP-MARGINS.
4524 If non-nil, that says to preserve the window's current margin, fringe,
4525 and scroll-bar settings.
4528 *** The new function `window-tree' returns a frame's window tree.
4531 ** Customizable fringe bitmaps
4533 *** New function `define-fringe-bitmap' can now be used to create new
4534 fringe bitmaps, as well as change the built-in fringe bitmaps.
4536 To change a built-in bitmap, do (require 'fringe) and use the symbol
4537 identifing the bitmap such as `left-truncation or `continued-line'.
4539 *** New function `destroy-fringe-bitmap' deletes a fringe bitmap
4540 or restores a built-in one to its default value.
4542 *** New function `set-fringe-bitmap-face' specifies the face to be
4543 used for a specific fringe bitmap. The face is automatically merged
4544 with the `fringe' face, so normally, the face should only specify the
4545 foreground color of the bitmap.
4547 *** There are new display properties, `left-fringe' and `right-fringe',
4548 that can be used to show a specific bitmap in the left or right fringe
4549 bitmap of the display line.
4551 Format is `display (left-fringe BITMAP [FACE])', where BITMAP is a
4552 symbol identifying a fringe bitmap, either built-in or defined with
4553 `define-fringe-bitmap', and FACE is an optional face name to be used
4554 for displaying the bitmap instead of the default `fringe' face.
4555 When specified, FACE is automatically merged with the `fringe' face.
4557 *** New function `fringe-bitmaps-at-pos' returns the current fringe
4558 bitmaps in the display line at a given buffer position.
4560 ** Other window fringe features:
4563 *** Controlling the default left and right fringe widths.
4565 The default left and right fringe widths for all windows of a frame
4566 can now be controlled by setting the `left-fringe' and `right-fringe'
4567 frame parameters to an integer value specifying the width in pixels.
4568 Setting the width to 0 effectively removes the corresponding fringe.
4570 The actual default fringe widths for the frame may deviate from the
4571 specified widths, since the combined fringe widths must match an
4572 integral number of columns. The extra width is distributed evenly
4573 between the left and right fringe. For force a specific fringe width,
4574 specify the width as a negative integer (if both widths are negative,
4575 only the left fringe gets the specified width).
4577 Setting the width to nil (the default), restores the default fringe
4578 width which is the minimum number of pixels necessary to display any
4579 of the currently defined fringe bitmaps. The width of the built-in
4580 fringe bitmaps is 8 pixels.
4583 *** Per-window fringe and scrollbar settings
4585 **** Windows can now have their own individual fringe widths and
4588 To control the fringe widths of a window, either set the buffer-local
4589 variables `left-fringe-width', `right-fringe-width', or call
4590 `set-window-fringes'.
4592 To control the fringe position in a window, that is, whether fringes
4593 are positioned between the display margins and the window's text area,
4594 or at the edges of the window, either set the buffer-local variable
4595 `fringes-outside-margins' or call `set-window-fringes'.
4597 The function `window-fringes' can be used to obtain the current
4598 settings. To make `left-fringe-width', `right-fringe-width', and
4599 `fringes-outside-margins' take effect, you must set them before
4600 displaying the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force
4601 an update of the display margins.
4603 **** Windows can now have their own individual scroll-bar settings
4604 controlling the width and position of scroll-bars.
4606 To control the scroll-bar of a window, either set the buffer-local
4607 variables `scroll-bar-mode' and `scroll-bar-width', or call
4608 `set-window-scroll-bars'. The function `window-scroll-bars' can be
4609 used to obtain the current settings. To make `scroll-bar-mode' and
4610 `scroll-bar-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
4611 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
4612 of the display margins.
4614 ** Redisplay features:
4617 *** `sit-for' can now be called with args (SECONDS &optional NODISP).
4620 *** New function `force-window-update' can initiate a full redisplay of
4621 one or all windows. Normally, this is not needed as changes in window
4622 contents are detected automatically. However, certain implicit
4623 changes to mode lines, header lines, or display properties may require
4624 forcing an explicit window update.
4627 *** (char-displayable-p CHAR) returns non-nil if Emacs ought to be able
4628 to display CHAR. More precisely, if the selected frame's fontset has
4629 a font to display the character set that CHAR belongs to.
4631 Fontsets can specify a font on a per-character basis; when the fontset
4632 does that, this value cannot be accurate.
4635 *** You can define multiple overlay arrows via the new
4636 variable `overlay-arrow-variable-list'.
4638 It contains a list of varibles which contain overlay arrow position
4639 markers, including the original `overlay-arrow-position' variable.
4641 Each variable on this list can have individual `overlay-arrow-string'
4642 and `overlay-arrow-bitmap' properties that specify an overlay arrow
4643 string (for non-window terminals) or fringe bitmap (for window
4644 systems) to display at the corresponding overlay arrow position.
4645 If either property is not set, the default `overlay-arrow-string' or
4646 'overlay-arrow-fringe-bitmap' will be used.
4649 *** New `line-height' and `line-spacing' properties for newline characters
4651 A newline can now have `line-height' and `line-spacing' text or overlay
4652 properties that control the height of the corresponding display row.
4654 If the `line-height' property value is t, the newline does not
4655 contribute to the height of the display row; instead the height of the
4656 newline glyph is reduced. Also, a `line-spacing' property on this
4657 newline is ignored. This can be used to tile small images or image
4658 slices without adding blank areas between the images.
4660 If the `line-height' property value is a positive integer, the value
4661 specifies the minimum line height in pixels. If necessary, the line
4662 height it increased by increasing the line's ascent.
4664 If the `line-height' property value is a float, the minimum line
4665 height is calculated by multiplying the default frame line height by
4668 If the `line-height' property value is a cons (FACE . RATIO), the
4669 minimum line height is calculated as RATIO * height of named FACE.
4670 RATIO is int or float. If FACE is t, it specifies the current face.
4672 If the `line-height' property value is a cons (nil . RATIO), the line
4673 height is calculated as RATIO * actual height of the line's contents.
4675 If the `line-height' value is a cons (HEIGHT . TOTAL), HEIGHT specifies
4676 the line height as described above, while TOTAL is any of the forms
4677 described above and specifies the total height of the line, causing a
4678 varying number of pixels to be inserted after the line to make it line
4679 exactly that many pixels high.
4681 If the `line-spacing' property value is an positive integer, the value
4682 is used as additional pixels to insert after the display line; this
4683 overrides the default frame `line-spacing' and any buffer local value of
4684 the `line-spacing' variable.
4686 If the `line-spacing' property is a float or cons, the line spacing
4687 is calculated as specified above for the `line-height' property.
4690 *** The buffer local `line-spacing' variable can now have a float value,
4691 which is used as a height relative to the default frame line height.
4694 *** Enhancements to stretch display properties
4696 The display property stretch specification form `(space PROPS)', where
4697 PROPS is a property list now allows pixel based width and height
4698 specifications, as well as enhanced horizontal text alignment.
4700 The value of these properties can now be a (primitive) expression
4701 which is evaluated during redisplay. The following expressions
4704 EXPR ::= NUM | (NUM) | UNIT | ELEM | POS | IMAGE | FORM
4705 NUM ::= INTEGER | FLOAT | SYMBOL
4706 UNIT ::= in | mm | cm | width | height
4707 ELEM ::= left-fringe | right-fringe | left-margin | right-margin
4709 POS ::= left | center | right
4710 FORM ::= (NUM . EXPR) | (OP EXPR ...)
4713 The form `NUM' specifies a fractional width or height of the default
4714 frame font size. The form `(NUM)' specifies an absolute number of
4715 pixels. If a symbol is specified, its buffer-local variable binding
4716 is used. The `in', `mm', and `cm' units specifies the number of
4717 pixels per inch, milli-meter, and centi-meter, resp. The `width' and
4718 `height' units correspond to the width and height of the current face
4719 font. An image specification corresponds to the width or height of
4722 The `left-fringe', `right-fringe', `left-margin', `right-margin',
4723 `scroll-bar', and `text' elements specify to the width of the
4724 corresponding area of the window.
4726 The `left', `center', and `right' positions can be used with :align-to
4727 to specify a position relative to the left edge, center, or right edge
4728 of the text area. One of the above window elements (except `text')
4729 can also be used with :align-to to specify that the position is
4730 relative to the left edge of the given area. Once the base offset for
4731 a relative position has been set (by the first occurrence of one of
4732 these symbols), further occurences of these symbols are interpreted as
4733 the width of the area.
4735 For example, to align to the center of the left-margin, use
4736 :align-to (+ left-margin (0.5 . left-margin))
4738 If no specific base offset is set for alignment, it is always relative
4739 to the left edge of the text area. For example, :align-to 0 in a
4740 header line aligns with the first text column in the text area.
4742 The value of the form `(NUM . EXPR)' is the value of NUM multiplied by
4743 the value of the expression EXPR. For example, (2 . in) specifies a
4744 width of 2 inches, while (0.5 . IMAGE) specifies half the width (or
4745 height) of the specified image.
4747 The form `(+ EXPR ...)' adds up the value of the expressions.
4748 The form `(- EXPR ...)' negates or subtracts the value of the expressions.
4751 *** Normally, the cursor is displayed at the end of any overlay and
4752 text property string that may be present at the current window
4753 position. The cursor can now be placed on any character of such
4754 strings by giving that character a non-nil `cursor' text property.
4757 *** The display space :width and :align-to text properties are now
4758 supported on text terminals.
4761 *** Support for displaying image slices
4763 **** New display property (slice X Y WIDTH HEIGHT) can be used with
4764 an image property to display only a specific slice of the image.
4766 **** Function `insert-image' has new optional fourth arg to
4767 specify image slice (X Y WIDTH HEIGHT).
4769 **** New function `insert-sliced-image' inserts a given image as a
4770 specified number of evenly sized slices (rows x columns).
4773 *** Images can now have an associated image map via the :map property.
4775 An image map is an alist where each element has the format (AREA ID PLIST).
4776 An AREA is specified as either a rectangle, a circle, or a polygon:
4777 A rectangle is a cons (rect . ((X0 . Y0) . (X1 . Y1))) specifying the
4778 pixel coordinates of the upper left and bottom right corners.
4779 A circle is a cons (circle . ((X0 . Y0) . R)) specifying the center
4780 and the radius of the circle; R can be a float or integer.
4781 A polygon is a cons (poly . [X0 Y0 X1 Y1 ...]) where each pair in the
4782 vector describes one corner in the polygon.
4784 When the mouse pointer is above a hot-spot area of an image, the
4785 PLIST of that hot-spot is consulted; if it contains a `help-echo'
4786 property it defines a tool-tip for the hot-spot, and if it contains
4787 a `pointer' property, it defines the shape of the mouse cursor when
4788 it is over the hot-spot. See the variable `void-area-text-pointer'
4789 for possible pointer shapes.
4791 When you click the mouse when the mouse pointer is over a hot-spot,
4792 an event is composed by combining the ID of the hot-spot with the
4793 mouse event, e.g. [area4 mouse-1] if the hot-spot's ID is `area4'.
4796 *** The function `find-image' now searches in etc/images/ and etc/.
4797 The new variable `image-load-path' is a list of locations in which to
4798 search for image files. The default is to search in etc/images, then
4799 in etc/, and finally in the directories specified by `load-path'.
4800 Subdirectories of etc/ and etc/images are not recursively searched; if
4801 you put an image file in a subdirectory, you have to specify it
4802 explicitly; for example, if an image is put in etc/images/foo/bar.xpm:
4804 (defimage foo-image '((:type xpm :file "foo/bar.xpm")))
4807 *** The new variable `max-image-size' defines the maximum size of
4808 images that Emacs will load and display.
4810 ** Mouse pointer features:
4814 *** The mouse pointer shape in void text areas (i.e. after the end of a
4815 line or below the last line in the buffer) of the text window is now
4816 controlled by the new variable `void-text-area-pointer'. The default
4817 is to use the `arrow' (non-text) pointer. Other choices are `text'
4818 (or nil), `hand', `vdrag', `hdrag', `modeline', and `hourglass'.
4821 *** The mouse pointer shape over an image can now be controlled by the
4822 :pointer image property.
4825 *** The mouse pointer shape over ordinary text or images can now be
4826 controlled/overriden via the `pointer' text property.
4828 ** Mouse event enhancements:
4831 *** Mouse events for clicks on window fringes now specify `left-fringe'
4832 or `right-fringe' as the area.
4835 *** All mouse events now include a buffer position regardless of where
4836 you clicked. For mouse clicks in window margins and fringes, this is
4837 a sensible buffer position corresponding to the surrounding text.
4840 *** `posn-point' now returns buffer position for non-text area events.
4843 *** Function `mouse-set-point' now works for events outside text area.
4846 *** New function `posn-area' returns window area clicked on (nil means
4850 *** Mouse events include actual glyph column and row for all event types
4854 *** New function `posn-actual-col-row' returns the actual glyph coordinates
4855 of the mouse event position.
4858 *** Mouse events can now indicate an image object clicked on.
4861 *** Mouse events include relative X and Y pixel coordinates relative to
4862 the top left corner of the object (image or character) clicked on.
4865 *** Mouse events include the pixel width and height of the object
4866 (image or character) clicked on.
4869 *** New functions 'posn-object', 'posn-object-x-y', 'posn-object-width-height'.
4871 These return the image or string object of a mouse click, the X and Y
4872 pixel coordinates relative to the top left corner of that object, and
4873 the total width and height of that object.
4875 ** Text property and overlay changes:
4878 *** Arguments for `remove-overlays' are now optional, so that you can
4879 remove all overlays in the buffer with just (remove-overlays).
4882 *** New variable `char-property-alias-alist'.
4884 This variable allows you to create alternative names for text
4885 properties. It works at the same level as `default-text-properties',
4886 although it applies to overlays as well. This variable was introduced
4887 to implement the `font-lock-face' property.
4890 *** New function `get-char-property-and-overlay' accepts the same
4891 arguments as `get-char-property' and returns a cons whose car is the
4892 return value of `get-char-property' called with those arguments and
4893 whose cdr is the overlay in which the property was found, or nil if
4894 it was found as a text property or not found at all.
4897 *** The new function `remove-list-of-text-properties'.
4899 It is like `remove-text-properties' except that it takes a list of
4900 property names as argument rather than a property list.
4905 *** The new face attribute condition `min-colors' can be used to tailor
4906 the face color to the number of colors supported by a display, and
4907 define the foreground and background colors accordingly so that they
4908 look best on a terminal that supports at least this many colors. This
4909 is now the preferred method for defining default faces in a way that
4910 makes a good use of the capabilities of the display.
4913 *** New function `display-supports-face-attributes-p' can be used to test
4914 whether a given set of face attributes is actually displayable.
4916 A new predicate `supports' has also been added to the `defface' face
4917 specification language, which can be used to do this test for faces
4918 defined with `defface'.
4921 *** The special treatment of faces whose names are of the form `fg:COLOR'
4922 or `bg:COLOR' has been removed. Lisp programs should use the
4923 `defface' facility for defining faces with specific colors, or use
4924 the feature of specifying the face attributes :foreground and :background
4925 directly in the `face' property instead of using a named face.
4928 *** The first face specification element in a defface can specify
4929 `default' instead of frame classification. Then its attributes act as
4930 defaults that apply to all the subsequent cases (and can be overridden
4934 *** The variable `face-font-rescale-alist' specifies how much larger
4935 (or smaller) font we should use. For instance, if the value is
4936 '((SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN . 1.3)) and a face requests a font of 10
4937 point, we actually use a font of 13 point if the font matches
4938 SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN.
4941 *** The function `face-differs-from-default-p' now truly checks
4942 whether the given face displays differently from the default face or
4943 not (previously it did only a very cursory check).
4946 *** `face-attribute', `face-foreground', `face-background', `face-stipple'.
4948 These now accept a new optional argument, INHERIT, which controls how
4949 face inheritance is used when determining the value of a face
4953 *** New functions `face-attribute-relative-p' and `merge-face-attribute'
4954 help with handling relative face attributes.
4957 *** The priority of faces in an :inherit attribute face list is reversed.
4959 If a face contains an :inherit attribute with a list of faces, earlier
4960 faces in the list override later faces in the list; in previous
4961 releases of Emacs, the order was the opposite. This change was made
4962 so that :inherit face lists operate identically to face lists in text
4966 *** On terminals, faces with the :inverse-video attribute are displayed
4967 with swapped foreground and background colors even when one of them is
4968 not specified. In previous releases of Emacs, if either foreground
4969 or background color was unspecified, colors were not swapped. This
4970 was inconsistent with the face behavior under X.
4973 *** `set-fontset-font', `fontset-info', `fontset-font' now operate on
4974 the default fontset if the argument NAME is nil..
4976 ** Font-Lock changes:
4979 *** New special text property `font-lock-face'.
4981 This property acts like the `face' property, but it is controlled by
4982 M-x font-lock-mode. It is not, strictly speaking, a builtin text
4983 property. Instead, it is implemented inside font-core.el, using the
4984 new variable `char-property-alias-alist'.
4987 *** font-lock can manage arbitrary text-properties beside `face'.
4989 **** the FACENAME returned in `font-lock-keywords' can be a list of the
4990 form (face FACE PROP1 VAL1 PROP2 VAL2 ...) so you can set other
4991 properties than `face'.
4993 **** `font-lock-extra-managed-props' can be set to make sure those
4994 extra properties are automatically cleaned up by font-lock.
4997 *** jit-lock obeys a new text-property `jit-lock-defer-multiline'.
4999 If a piece of text with that property gets contextually refontified
5000 (see `jit-lock-defer-contextually'), then all of that text will
5001 be refontified. This is useful when the syntax of a textual element
5002 depends on text several lines further down (and when `font-lock-multiline'
5003 is not appropriate to solve that problem). For example in Perl:
5011 Adding/removing the last `e' changes the `bar' from being a piece of
5012 text to being a piece of code, so you'd put a `jit-lock-defer-multiline'
5013 property over the second half of the command to force (deferred)
5014 refontification of `bar' whenever the `e' is added/removed.
5016 ** Major mode mechanism changes:
5019 *** `set-auto-mode' now gives the interpreter magic line (if present)
5020 precedence over the file name. Likewise an `<?xml' or `<!DOCTYPE'
5021 declaration will give the buffer XML or SGML mode, based on the new
5022 var `magic-mode-alist'.
5025 *** Use the new function `run-mode-hooks' to run the major mode's mode hook.
5028 *** All major mode functions should now run the new normal hook
5029 `after-change-major-mode-hook', at their very end, after the mode
5030 hooks. `run-mode-hooks' does this automatically.
5033 *** If a major mode function has a non-nil `no-clone-indirect'
5034 property, `clone-indirect-buffer' signals an error if you use
5038 *** Major modes can define `eldoc-documentation-function'
5039 locally to provide Eldoc functionality by some method appropriate to
5043 *** `define-derived-mode' by default creates a new empty abbrev table.
5044 It does not copy abbrevs from the parent mode's abbrev table.
5047 *** The new function `run-mode-hooks' and the new macro `delay-mode-hooks'
5048 are used by `define-derived-mode' to make sure the mode hook for the
5049 parent mode is run at the end of the child mode.
5051 ** Minor mode changes:
5054 *** `define-minor-mode' now accepts arbitrary additional keyword arguments
5055 and simply passes them to `defcustom', if applicable.
5058 *** `minor-mode-list' now holds a list of minor mode commands.
5061 *** `define-global-minor-mode'.
5063 This is a new name for what was formerly called
5064 `easy-mmode-define-global-mode'. The old name remains as an alias.
5066 ** Command loop changes:
5069 *** The new function `called-interactively-p' does what many people
5070 have mistakenly believed `interactive-p' to do: it returns t if the
5071 calling function was called through `call-interactively'.
5073 Only use this when you cannot solve the problem by adding a new
5074 INTERACTIVE argument to the command.
5077 *** The function `commandp' takes an additional optional argument.
5079 If it is non-nil, then `commandp' checks for a function that could be
5080 called with `call-interactively', and does not return t for keyboard
5084 *** When a command returns, the command loop moves point out from
5085 within invisible text, in the same way it moves out from within text
5086 covered by an image or composition property.
5088 This makes it generally unnecessary to mark invisible text as intangible.
5089 This is particularly good because the intangible property often has
5090 unexpected side-effects since the property applies to everything
5091 (including `goto-char', ...) whereas this new code is only run after
5092 `post-command-hook' and thus does not care about intermediate states.
5095 *** If a command sets `transient-mark-mode' to `only', that
5096 enables Transient Mark mode for the following command only.
5097 During that following command, the value of `transient-mark-mode'
5098 is `identity'. If it is still `identity' at the end of the command,
5099 the next return to the command loop changes to nil.
5102 *** Both the variable and the function `disabled-command-hook' have
5103 been renamed to `disabled-command-function'. The variable
5104 `disabled-command-hook' has been kept as an obsolete alias.
5107 *** `emacsserver' now runs `pre-command-hook' and `post-command-hook'
5108 when it receives a request from emacsclient.
5110 ** Lisp file loading changes:
5113 *** `load-history' can now have elements of the form (t . FUNNAME),
5114 which means FUNNAME was previously defined as an autoload (before the
5115 current file redefined it).
5118 *** `load-history' now records (defun . FUNNAME) when a function is
5119 defined. For a variable, it records just the variable name.
5122 *** The function `symbol-file' can now search specifically for function,
5123 variable or face definitions.
5126 *** `provide' and `featurep' now accept an optional second argument
5127 to test/provide subfeatures. Also `provide' now checks `after-load-alist'
5128 and runs any code associated with the provided feature.
5131 *** The variable `recursive-load-depth-limit' has been deleted.
5132 Emacs now signals an error if the same file is loaded with more
5133 than 3 levels of nesting.
5136 ** Byte compiler changes:
5138 *** The byte compiler now displays the actual line and character
5139 position of errors, where possible. Additionally, the form of its
5140 warning and error messages have been brought into line with GNU standards
5141 for these. As a result, you can use next-error and friends on the
5142 compilation output buffer.
5144 *** The new macro `with-no-warnings' suppresses all compiler warnings
5145 inside its body. In terms of execution, it is equivalent to `progn'.
5147 *** You can avoid warnings for possibly-undefined symbols with a
5148 simple convention that the compiler understands. (This is mostly
5149 useful in code meant to be portable to different Emacs versions.)
5150 Write forms like the following, or code that macroexpands into such
5153 (if (fboundp 'foo) <then> <else>)
5154 (if (boundp 'foo) <then> <else)
5156 In the first case, using `foo' as a function inside the <then> form
5157 won't produce a warning if it's not defined as a function, and in the
5158 second case, using `foo' as a variable won't produce a warning if it's
5159 unbound. The test must be in exactly one of the above forms (after
5160 macro expansion), but such tests can be nested. Note that `when' and
5161 `unless' expand to `if', but `cond' doesn't.
5163 *** `(featurep 'xemacs)' is treated by the compiler as nil. This
5164 helps to avoid noisy compiler warnings in code meant to run under both
5165 Emacs and XEmacs and can sometimes make the result significantly more
5166 efficient. Since byte code from recent versions of XEmacs won't
5167 generally run in Emacs and vice versa, this optimization doesn't lose
5170 *** The local variable `no-byte-compile' in Lisp files is now obeyed.
5173 *** When a Lisp file uses CL functions at run-time, compiling the file
5174 now issues warnings about these calls, unless the file performs
5175 (require 'cl) when loaded.
5177 ** Frame operations:
5180 *** New functions `frame-current-scroll-bars' and `window-current-scroll-bars'.
5182 These functions return the current locations of the vertical and
5183 horizontal scroll bars in a frame or window.
5186 *** The new function `modify-all-frames-parameters' modifies parameters
5187 for all (existing and future) frames.
5190 *** The new frame parameter `tty-color-mode' specifies the mode to use
5191 for color support on character terminal frames. Its value can be a
5192 number of colors to support, or a symbol. See the Emacs Lisp
5193 Reference manual for more detailed documentation.
5196 *** When using non-toolkit scroll bars with the default width,
5197 the `scroll-bar-width' frame parameter value is nil.
5202 *** Already true in Emacs 21.1, but not emphasized clearly enough:
5204 Multibyte buffers can now faithfully record all 256 character codes
5205 from 0 to 255. As a result, most of the past reasons to use unibyte
5206 buffers no longer exist. We only know of three reasons to use them
5209 1. If you prefer to use unibyte text all of the time.
5211 2. For reading files into temporary buffers, when you want to avoid
5212 the time it takes to convert the format.
5214 3. For binary files where format conversion would be pointless and
5218 *** `set-buffer-file-coding-system' now takes an additional argument,
5219 NOMODIFY. If it is non-nil, it means don't mark the buffer modified.
5222 *** The new variable `auto-coding-functions' lets you specify functions
5223 to examine a file being visited and deduce the proper coding system
5224 for it. (If the coding system is detected incorrectly for a specific
5225 file, you can put a `coding:' tags to override it.)
5228 *** The new function `merge-coding-systems' fills in unspecified aspects
5229 of one coding system from another coding system.
5232 *** New coding system property `mime-text-unsuitable' indicates that
5233 the coding system's `mime-charset' is not suitable for MIME text
5237 *** New function `decode-coding-inserted-region' decodes a region as if
5238 it is read from a file without decoding.
5241 *** New CCL functions `lookup-character' and `lookup-integer' access
5242 hash tables defined by the Lisp function `define-translation-hash-table'.
5245 *** New function `quail-find-key' returns a list of keys to type in the
5246 current input method to input a character.
5248 ** Mode line changes:
5251 *** New function `format-mode-line'.
5253 This returns the mode line or header line of the selected (or a
5254 specified) window as a string with or without text properties.
5257 *** The new mode-line construct `(:propertize ELT PROPS...)' can be
5258 used to add text properties to mode-line elements.
5261 *** The new `%i' and `%I' constructs for `mode-line-format' can be used
5262 to display the size of the accessible part of the buffer on the mode
5266 *** Mouse-face on mode-line (and header-line) is now supported.
5268 ** Menu manipulation changes:
5271 *** To manipulate the File menu using easy-menu, you must specify the
5272 proper name "file". In previous Emacs versions, you had to specify
5273 "files", even though the menu item itself was changed to say "File"
5274 several versions ago.
5277 *** The dummy function keys made by easy-menu are now always lower case.
5278 If you specify the menu item name "Ada", for instance, it uses `ada'
5279 as the "key" bound by that key binding.
5281 This is relevant only if Lisp code looks for the bindings that were
5282 made with easy-menu.
5285 *** `easy-menu-define' now allows you to use nil for the symbol name
5286 if you don't need to give the menu a name. If you install the menu
5287 into other keymaps right away (MAPS is non-nil), it usually doesn't
5288 need to have a name.
5290 ** Operating system access:
5293 *** The new primitive `get-internal-run-time' returns the processor
5294 run time used by Emacs since start-up.
5297 *** Functions `user-uid' and `user-real-uid' now return floats if the
5298 user UID doesn't fit in a Lisp integer. Function `user-full-name'
5299 accepts a float as UID parameter.
5302 *** New function `locale-info' accesses locale information.
5305 *** On MS Windows, locale-coding-system is used to interact with the OS.
5306 The Windows specific variable w32-system-coding-system, which was
5307 formerly used for that purpose is now an alias for locale-coding-system.
5310 *** New function `redirect-debugging-output' can be used to redirect
5311 debugging output on the stderr file handle to a file.
5316 *** A number of hooks have been renamed to better follow the conventions:
5318 `find-file-hooks' to `find-file-hook',
5319 `find-file-not-found-hooks' to `find-file-not-found-functions',
5320 `write-file-hooks' to `write-file-functions',
5321 `write-contents-hooks' to `write-contents-functions',
5322 `x-lost-selection-hooks' to `x-lost-selection-functions',
5323 `x-sent-selection-hooks' to `x-sent-selection-functions',
5324 `delete-frame-hook' to `delete-frame-functions'.
5326 In each case the old name remains as an alias for the moment.
5329 *** local-write-file-hooks is marked obsolete
5331 Use the LOCAL arg of `add-hook'.
5334 *** New function `x-send-client-message' sends a client message when
5340 *** New variable `gc-cons-percentage' automatically grows the GC cons threshold
5341 as the heap size increases.
5344 *** New variables `gc-elapsed' and `gcs-done' provide extra information
5345 on garbage collection.
5348 *** The normal hook `post-gc-hook' is run at the end of garbage collection.
5350 The hook is run with GC inhibited, so use it with care.
5352 * New Packages for Lisp Programming in Emacs 22.1
5355 ** The new library button.el implements simple and fast `clickable
5356 buttons' in emacs buffers. Buttons are much lighter-weight than the
5357 `widgets' implemented by widget.el, and can be used by lisp code that
5358 doesn't require the full power of widgets. Emacs uses buttons for
5359 such things as help and apropos buffers.
5362 ** The new library tree-widget.el provides a widget to display a set
5363 of hierarchical data as an outline. For example, the tree-widget is
5364 well suited to display a hierarchy of directories and files.
5367 ** The new library bindat.el provides functions to unpack and pack
5368 binary data structures, such as network packets, to and from Lisp
5372 ** master-mode.el implements a minor mode for scrolling a slave
5373 buffer without leaving your current buffer, the master buffer.
5375 It can be used by sql.el, for example: the SQL buffer is the master
5376 and its SQLi buffer is the slave. This allows you to scroll the SQLi
5377 buffer containing the output from the SQL buffer containing the
5380 This is how to use sql.el and master.el together: the variable
5381 sql-buffer contains the slave buffer. It is a local variable in the
5384 (add-hook 'sql-mode-hook
5385 (function (lambda ()
5387 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
5388 (add-hook 'sql-set-sqli-hook
5389 (function (lambda ()
5390 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
5393 ** The new library benchmark.el does timing measurements on Lisp code.
5395 This includes measuring garbage collection time.
5398 ** The new library testcover.el does test coverage checking.
5400 This is so you can tell whether you've tested all paths in your Lisp
5401 code. It works with edebug.
5403 The function `testcover-start' instruments all functions in a given
5404 file. Then test your code. The function `testcover-mark-all' adds
5405 overlay "splotches" to the Lisp file's buffer to show where coverage
5406 is lacking. The command `testcover-next-mark' (bind it to a key!)
5407 will move point forward to the next spot that has a splotch.
5409 Normally, a red splotch indicates the form was never completely
5410 evaluated; a brown splotch means it always evaluated to the same
5411 value. The red splotches are skipped for forms that can't possibly
5412 complete their evaluation, such as `error'. The brown splotches are
5413 skipped for forms that are expected to always evaluate to the same
5414 value, such as (setq x 14).
5416 For difficult cases, you can add do-nothing macros to your code to
5417 help out the test coverage tool. The macro `noreturn' suppresses a
5418 red splotch. It is an error if the argument to `noreturn' does
5419 return. The macro `1value' suppresses a brown splotch for its argument.
5420 This macro is a no-op except during test-coverage -- then it signals
5421 an error if the argument actually returns differing values.
5423 * Installation changes in Emacs 21.3
5425 ** Support for GNU/Linux on little-endian MIPS and on IBM S390 has
5429 * Changes in Emacs 21.3
5431 ** The obsolete C mode (c-mode.el) has been removed to avoid problems
5434 ** UTF-16 coding systems are available, encoding the same characters
5437 ** There is a new language environment for UTF-8 (set up automatically
5440 ** Translation tables are available between equivalent characters in
5441 different Emacs charsets -- for instance `e with acute' coming from the
5442 Latin-1 and Latin-2 charsets. User options `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode'
5443 and `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode' respectively turn on translation
5444 between ISO 8859 character sets (`unification') on encoding
5445 (e.g. writing a file) and decoding (e.g. reading a file). Note that
5446 `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode' is useful and safe, but
5447 `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode' can cause text to change when you read
5448 it and write it out again without edits, so it is not generally advisable.
5449 By default `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode' is turned on.
5451 ** In Emacs running on the X window system, the default value of
5452 `selection-coding-system' is now `compound-text-with-extensions'.
5454 If you want the old behavior, set selection-coding-system to
5455 compound-text, which may be significantly more efficient. Using
5456 compound-text-with-extensions seems to be necessary only for decoding
5457 text from applications under XFree86 4.2, whose behavior is actually
5458 contrary to the compound text specification.
5461 * Installation changes in Emacs 21.2
5463 ** Support for BSD/OS 5.0 has been added.
5465 ** Support for AIX 5.1 was added.
5468 * Changes in Emacs 21.2
5470 ** Emacs now supports compound-text extended segments in X selections.
5472 X applications can use `extended segments' to encode characters in
5473 compound text that belong to character sets which are not part of the
5474 list of approved standard encodings for X, e.g. Big5. To paste
5475 selections with such characters into Emacs, use the new coding system
5476 compound-text-with-extensions as the value of selection-coding-system.
5478 ** The default values of `tooltip-delay' and `tooltip-hide-delay'
5481 ** On terminals whose erase-char is ^H (Backspace), Emacs
5482 now uses normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.
5484 ** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from
5485 initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode,
5486 instead of using default-major-mode.
5488 ** The new option `Info-scroll-prefer-subnodes' causes Info to behave
5489 like the stand-alone Info reader (from the GNU Texinfo package) as far
5490 as motion between nodes and their subnodes is concerned. If it is t
5491 (the default), Emacs behaves as before when you type SPC in a menu: it
5492 visits the subnode pointed to by the first menu entry. If this option
5493 is nil, SPC scrolls to the end of the current node, and only then goes
5494 to the first menu item, like the stand-alone reader does.
5496 This change was already in Emacs 21.1, but wasn't advertised in the
5500 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.2
5502 ** The meanings of scroll-up-aggressively and scroll-down-aggressively
5503 have been interchanged, so that the former now controls scrolling up,
5504 and the latter now controls scrolling down.
5506 ** The variable `compilation-parse-errors-filename-function' can
5507 be used to transform filenames found in compilation output.
5510 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
5512 See the INSTALL file for information on installing extra libraries and
5513 fonts to take advantage of the new graphical features and extra
5514 charsets in this release.
5516 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
5518 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
5520 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
5521 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
5524 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
5525 support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the
5526 maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions. Changes to
5527 build on other 64-bit systems should be straightforward modulo any
5528 necessary changes to unexec.
5530 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
5531 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
5533 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
5534 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
5536 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
5537 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
5539 ** This version can be built for the Macintosh, but does not implement
5540 all of the new display features described below. The port currently
5541 lacks unexec, asynchronous processes, and networking support. See the
5542 "Emacs and the Mac OS" appendix in the Emacs manual, for the
5543 description of aspects specific to the Mac.
5545 ** Note that the MS-Windows port does not yet implement various of the
5546 new display features described below.
5549 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
5551 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
5553 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
5554 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
5555 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
5556 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
5559 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
5561 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
5562 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
5563 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
5564 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
5567 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
5568 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
5569 under Lisp changes, below.
5571 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
5573 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
5574 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
5575 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
5576 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
5577 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
5578 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
5581 The command-line options `-fg COLOR', `-bg COLOR', and `-rv' are now
5582 supported on character terminals.
5584 Emacs automatically remaps all X-style color specifications to one of
5585 the colors supported by the terminal. This means you could have the
5586 same color customizations that work both on a windowed display and on
5587 a TTY or when Emacs is invoked with the -nw option.
5589 ** New default font is Courier 12pt under X.
5593 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
5594 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
5595 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
5596 You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes' to enable
5599 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
5601 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
5602 longer than one line, Emacs can resize the minibuffer window unless it
5603 is on a frame of its own. You can control resizing and the maximum
5604 minibuffer window size by setting the following variables:
5606 - User option: max-mini-window-height
5608 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
5609 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
5610 specifies a number of lines.
5614 - User option: resize-mini-windows
5616 How to resize mini-windows. If nil, don't resize. If t, always
5617 resize to fit the size of the text. If `grow-only', let mini-windows
5618 grow only, until they become empty, at which point they are shrunk
5621 Default is `grow-only'.
5625 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see
5626 <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will need version 0.92.26, or later.
5628 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
5630 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
5631 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
5634 ** File selection dialog on MS-Windows is supported.
5636 When a file is visited by clicking File->Open, the MS-Windows version
5637 now pops up a standard file selection dialog where you can select a
5638 file to visit. File->Save As also pops up that dialog.
5640 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
5642 Emacs now uses toolkit scroll bars if available. When configured for
5643 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scroll bar. Otherwise, when
5644 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
5645 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
5646 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
5649 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
5650 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
5651 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
5652 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
5653 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
5654 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
5656 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
5657 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
5658 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
5659 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
5660 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
5661 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
5663 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
5664 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
5665 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
5666 imake configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
5667 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
5669 ** Tool bar support.
5671 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
5672 of how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level
5673 changes. Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is
5674 displayed and is on by default. The appearance of the bar is improved
5675 if Emacs has been built with XPM image support. Otherwise monochrome
5678 To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons
5679 for specific modes (with copyright assignments).
5683 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
5684 mouse position. The Lisp package `tooltip' implements them. You can
5685 turn them off via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
5687 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
5688 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
5689 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
5690 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
5692 ** Automatic Hscrolling
5694 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
5695 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
5698 If a window is scrolled horizontally with set-window-hscroll, or
5699 scroll-left/scroll-right (C-x <, C-x >), this serves as a lower bound
5700 for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will scroll
5701 the text more to the left if necessary, but won't scroll the text more
5702 to the right than the column set with set-window-hscroll etc.
5704 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
5705 of its own. By default, when a window is selected, the cursor is
5706 solid; otherwise, it is hollow. The user-option
5707 `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to display the
5708 cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is shown, if
5709 non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown.
5711 ** Fringes to the left and right of windows are used to display
5712 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
5713 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
5714 customizing face `fringe'.
5716 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default.
5717 You can change its appearance by modifying the face `mode-line'.
5718 In particular, setting the `:box' attribute to nil turns off the 3D
5719 appearance of the mode line. (The 3D appearance makes the mode line
5720 occupy more space, and thus might cause the first or the last line of
5721 the window to be partially obscured.)
5723 The variable `mode-line-inverse-video', which was used in older
5724 versions of emacs to make the mode-line stand out, is now deprecated.
5725 However, setting it to nil will cause the `mode-line' face to be
5726 ignored, and mode-lines to be drawn using the default text face.
5728 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
5730 Different parts of the mode line have been made mouse-sensitive on all
5731 systems which support the mouse. Moving the mouse to a
5732 mouse-sensitive part in the mode line changes the appearance of the
5733 mouse pointer to an arrow, and help about available mouse actions is
5734 displayed either in the echo area, or in the tooltip window if you
5737 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
5739 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line goes to the next buffer.
5741 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name goes to the previous buffer.
5743 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
5744 `*') toggles the status.
5746 - Mouse-3 on the mode name displays a minor-mode menu.
5748 ** Hourglass pointer
5750 Emacs can optionally display an hourglass pointer under X. You can
5751 turn the display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
5755 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
5756 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
5757 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
5760 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
5762 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
5763 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
5764 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
5767 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
5768 have to do anything to activate it.
5770 ** The default binding of the Delete key has changed.
5772 The new user-option `normal-erase-is-backspace' can be set to
5773 determine the effect of the Delete and Backspace function keys.
5775 On window systems, the default value of this option is chosen
5776 according to the keyboard used. If the keyboard has both a Backspace
5777 key and a Delete key, and both are mapped to their usual meanings, the
5778 option's default value is set to t, so that Backspace can be used to
5779 delete backward, and Delete can be used to delete forward. On
5780 keyboards which either have only one key (usually labeled DEL), or two
5781 keys DEL and BS which produce the same effect, the option's value is
5782 set to nil, and these keys delete backward.
5784 If not running under a window system, setting this option accomplishes
5785 a similar effect by mapping C-h, which is usually generated by the
5786 Backspace key, to DEL, and by mapping DEL to C-d via
5787 `keyboard-translate'. The former functionality of C-h is available on
5788 the F1 key. You should probably not use this setting on a text-only
5789 terminal if you don't have both Backspace, Delete and F1 keys.
5791 Programmatically, you can call function normal-erase-is-backspace-mode
5792 to toggle the behavior of the Delete and Backspace keys.
5794 ** The default for user-option `next-line-add-newlines' has been
5795 changed to nil, i.e. C-n will no longer add newlines at the end of a
5798 ** The <home> and <end> keys now move to the beginning or end of the
5799 current line, respectively. C-<home> and C-<end> move to the
5800 beginning and end of the buffer.
5802 ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the
5803 recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is
5806 ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
5807 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
5809 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
5810 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
5813 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs's byte
5814 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
5817 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
5819 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
5820 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
5821 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
5823 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
5824 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
5825 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
5827 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
5830 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
5832 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
5833 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
5834 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
5835 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
5836 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
5839 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
5840 all frames except the selected one.
5842 ** The new user-option `confirm-kill-emacs' can be customized to
5843 let Emacs ask for confirmation before exiting.
5845 ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs
5846 header-line (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window),
5847 so that it remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled.
5848 This behavior may be disabled by customizing the option
5849 `Info-use-header-line'.
5851 ** Polish, Czech, German, and French translations of Emacs' reference card
5852 have been added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex', `cs-refcard.tex',
5853 `de-refcard.tex' and `fr-refcard.tex'. Postscript files are included.
5855 ** An `Emacs Survival Guide', etc/survival.tex, is available.
5857 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
5858 `dired-ref.tex'. A French translation is available in
5861 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
5862 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
5863 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
5864 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
5866 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable through Customize.
5868 You can no longer use `M-x customize-variable' to customize `load-path'
5869 because it now contains a version-dependent component. You can still
5870 use `add-to-list' and `setq' to customize this variable in your
5871 `~/.emacs' init file or to modify it from any Lisp program in general.
5873 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
5874 point in a pop-up window.
5876 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
5877 under XFree86. To enable this, use the `mouse-wheel-mode' command, or
5878 customize the variable `mouse-wheel-mode'.
5880 The variables `mouse-wheel-follow-mouse' and `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'
5881 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
5883 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
5884 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
5885 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
5886 You can customize `auto-save-list-file-prefix' to change this location.
5888 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
5890 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
5891 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
5893 ** The new command M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET will delete the
5894 trailing whitespace within the current restriction. You can also add
5895 this function to `write-file-hooks' or `local-write-file-hooks'.
5897 ** When visiting a file with M-x find-file-literally, no newlines will
5898 be added to the end of the buffer even if `require-final-newline' is
5901 ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be
5902 set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a
5903 file that is already visited under a different name.
5905 ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to
5906 nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size.
5908 ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name
5909 and displays information about that.
5911 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
5912 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
5914 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
5915 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
5916 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
5917 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
5918 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
5919 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
5921 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
5922 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
5924 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
5925 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
5926 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
5927 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
5928 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
5929 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
5930 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
5932 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
5933 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
5935 ** The new Custom option `keyboard-coding-system' specifies a coding
5936 system for keyboard input.
5938 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
5939 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
5940 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
5941 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
5942 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
5943 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
5944 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
5945 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
5946 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
5948 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
5949 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
5951 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
5952 displays all characters in that character set.
5954 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
5955 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
5957 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
5958 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
5959 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
5961 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
5962 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
5963 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
5964 GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet but recent X releases have
5965 8859-15. See etc/INSTALL for information on obtaining extra fonts.
5966 There are new Leim input methods for Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix (only)
5969 ** New language environments `Dutch' and `Spanish'.
5970 These new environments mainly select appropriate translations
5973 ** In Ethiopic language environment, special key bindings for
5974 function keys are changed as follows. This is to conform to "Emacs
5975 Lisp Coding Convention".
5977 new command old-binding
5978 --- ------- -----------
5979 f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-buffer f5
5980 S-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-region f5
5981 C-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-mail-or-marker f5
5983 f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-buffer unchanged
5984 S-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-region unchanged
5985 C-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-mail-or-marker unchanged
5987 S-f5 ethio-toggle-punctuation f3
5988 S-f6 ethio-modify-vowel f6
5989 S-f7 ethio-replace-space f7
5990 S-f8 ethio-input-special-character f8
5991 S-f9 ethio-replace-space unchanged
5992 C-f9 ethio-toggle-space f2
5994 ** There are new Leim input methods.
5995 New input methods "turkish-postfix", "turkish-alt-postfix",
5996 "greek-mizuochi", "TeX", and "greek-babel" are now part of the Leim
5999 ** The rule of input method "slovak" is slightly changed. Now the
6000 rules for translating "q" and "Q" to "`" (backquote) are deleted, thus
6001 typing them inserts "q" and "Q" respectively. Rules for translating
6002 "=q", "+q", "=Q", and "+Q" to "`" are also deleted. Now, to input
6003 "`", you must type "=q".
6005 ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO
6006 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display
6007 more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of
6008 empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a
6009 window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this
6012 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
6013 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
6014 defined in newcomment.el. You can choose different styles of region
6015 commenting with the variable `comment-style'.
6017 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
6018 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
6019 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
6020 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
6022 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
6023 on the display using several methods
6025 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
6026 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
6027 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
6029 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
6030 equivalent to specifying the frame parameter.
6032 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
6034 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
6035 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
6037 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
6038 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
6039 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
6040 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
6042 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
6043 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
6044 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
6046 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
6047 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
6049 ** New X resources recognized
6051 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
6052 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
6053 is useful for debugging X problems.
6057 emacs.synchronous: true
6059 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
6060 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
6061 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
6062 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
6063 visual class names are
6072 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
6073 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
6076 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
6077 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
6078 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
6083 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
6085 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
6086 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
6087 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
6088 resource values are `true' or `on'.
6092 emacs.privateColormap: true
6094 ** Faces and frame parameters.
6096 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
6097 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
6098 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
6099 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
6100 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
6101 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
6102 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
6104 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
6105 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
6106 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
6107 `default' face and vice versa.
6111 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
6113 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
6115 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
6116 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
6117 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
6118 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
6120 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
6121 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
6122 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
6124 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
6127 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
6129 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
6130 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
6131 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
6132 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
6134 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
6136 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
6138 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
6140 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
6143 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
6146 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
6148 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
6149 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
6150 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
6152 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
6153 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi and Less).
6155 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
6156 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
6157 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
6159 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
6161 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
6162 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggressively' is a
6163 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
6164 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
6166 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
6167 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggressively' is a
6168 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
6169 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
6171 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
6172 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
6173 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
6176 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
6178 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
6179 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
6180 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
6182 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
6183 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
6184 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
6185 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
6186 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
6187 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
6189 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
6191 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
6192 notably at the end of lines.
6194 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
6195 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
6197 ** The function `replace-rectangle' is an alias for `string-rectangle'.
6199 ** The new command M-x string-insert-rectangle is like `string-rectangle',
6200 but inserts text instead of replacing it.
6202 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
6203 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
6204 after each match to get the replacement text.
6206 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
6207 you edit the replacement string.
6209 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB'
6210 (if you load the library `mailabbrev'), lets you complete mail aliases
6211 in the text, analogous to lisp-complete-symbol.
6213 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
6215 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
6216 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
6218 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
6219 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
6220 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
6221 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
6224 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
6225 read mail from the menu etc.
6227 ** The environment variable `EMACSLOCKDIR' is no longer used on MS-Windows.
6228 This environment variable was used when creating lock files. Emacs on
6229 MS-Windows does not use this variable anymore. This change was made
6230 before Emacs 21.1, but wasn't documented until now.
6232 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
6233 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
6235 ** The new command `msdos-set-mouse-buttons' forces the MS-DOS version
6236 of Emacs to behave as if the mouse had a specified number of buttons.
6237 This comes handy with mice that don't report their number of buttons
6238 correctly. One example is the wheeled mice, which report 3 buttons,
6239 but clicks on the middle button are not passed to the MS-DOS version
6242 ** Customize changes
6244 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
6245 `State' menu to add comments, or give a prefix argument to
6246 M-x customize-set-variable or M-x customize-set-value. Note that
6247 customization comments will cause the customizations to fail in
6248 earlier versions of Emacs.
6250 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
6251 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
6254 *** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it
6255 does not allow you to save customizations in your `~/.emacs' init
6256 file. This is because saving customizations from such a session would
6257 wipe out all the other customizationss you might have on your init
6260 ** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it
6261 does not save disabled and enabled commands for future sessions, to
6262 avoid overwriting existing customizations of this kind that are
6263 already in your init file.
6265 ** New features in evaluation commands
6267 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
6268 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
6269 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the new
6270 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
6271 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
6273 The default values for the first two of these variables are 12 and 4
6274 respectively, which means that `eval-expression' now prints at most
6275 the first 12 members of a list and at most 4 nesting levels deep (if
6276 the list is longer or deeper than that, an ellipsis `...' is
6279 <RET> or <mouse-2> on the printed text toggles between an abbreviated
6280 printed representation and an unabbreviated one.
6282 The default value of eval-expression-debug-on-error is t, so any error
6283 during evaluation produces a backtrace.
6285 *** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
6286 code when called with a prefix argument.
6290 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
6291 current user setups (although it's believed that these
6292 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
6293 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
6294 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
6295 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
6298 *** The hardcoded switch to "java" style in Java mode is gone.
6299 CC Mode used to automatically set the style to "java" when Java mode
6300 is entered. This has now been removed since it caused too much
6303 However, to keep backward compatibility to a certain extent, the
6304 default value for c-default-style now specifies the "java" style for
6305 java-mode, but "gnu" for all other modes (as before). So you won't
6306 notice the change if you haven't touched that variable.
6308 *** New cleanups, space-before-funcall and compact-empty-funcall.
6309 Two new cleanups have been added to c-cleanup-list:
6311 space-before-funcall causes a space to be inserted before the opening
6312 parenthesis of a function call, which gives the style "foo (bar)".
6314 compact-empty-funcall causes any space before a function call opening
6315 parenthesis to be removed if there are no arguments to the function.
6316 It's typically useful together with space-before-funcall to get the
6317 style "foo (bar)" and "foo()".
6319 *** Some keywords now automatically trigger reindentation.
6320 Keywords like "else", "while", "catch" and "finally" have been made
6321 "electric" to make them reindent automatically when they continue an
6322 earlier statement. An example:
6324 for (i = 0; i < 17; i++)
6326 res += a[i]->offset;
6329 Here, the "else" should be indented like the preceding "if", since it
6330 continues that statement. CC Mode will automatically reindent it after
6331 the "else" has been typed in full, since it's not until then it's
6332 possible to decide whether it's a new statement or a continuation of
6335 CC Mode uses Abbrev mode to achieve this, which is therefore turned on
6338 *** M-a and M-e now moves by sentence in multiline strings.
6339 Previously these two keys only moved by sentence in comments, which
6340 meant that sentence movement didn't work in strings containing
6341 documentation or other natural language text.
6343 The reason it's only activated in multiline strings (i.e. strings that
6344 contain a newline, even when escaped by a '\') is to avoid stopping in
6345 the short strings that often reside inside statements. Multiline
6346 strings almost always contain text in a natural language, as opposed
6347 to other strings that typically contain format specifications,
6348 commands, etc. Also, it's not that bothersome that M-a and M-e misses
6349 sentences in single line strings, since they're short anyway.
6351 *** Support for autodoc comments in Pike mode.
6352 Autodoc comments for Pike are used to extract documentation from the
6353 source, like Javadoc in Java. Pike mode now recognize this markup in
6354 comment prefixes and paragraph starts.
6356 *** The comment prefix regexps on c-comment-prefix may be mode specific.
6357 When c-comment-prefix is an association list, it specifies the comment
6358 line prefix on a per-mode basis, like c-default-style does. This
6359 change came about to support the special autodoc comment prefix in
6362 *** Better handling of syntactic errors.
6363 The recovery after unbalanced parens earlier in the buffer has been
6364 improved; CC Mode now reports them by dinging and giving a message
6365 stating the offending line, but still recovers and indent the
6366 following lines in a sane way (most of the time). An "else" with no
6367 matching "if" is handled similarly. If an error is discovered while
6368 indenting a region, the whole region is still indented and the error
6369 is reported afterwards.
6371 *** Lineup functions may now return absolute columns.
6372 A lineup function can give an absolute column to indent the line to by
6373 returning a vector with the desired column as the first element.
6375 *** More robust and warning-free byte compilation.
6376 Although this is strictly not a user visible change (well, depending
6377 on the view of a user), it's still worth mentioning that CC Mode now
6378 can be compiled in the standard ways without causing trouble. Some
6379 code have also been moved between the subpackages to enhance the
6380 modularity somewhat. Thanks to Martin Buchholz for doing the
6383 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
6384 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
6385 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
6386 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
6387 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
6390 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
6391 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
6392 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
6393 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
6394 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
6395 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
6397 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
6398 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
6399 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
6400 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
6401 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
6402 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
6403 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
6404 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
6406 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
6407 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
6408 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
6409 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
6412 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
6413 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
6414 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
6415 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
6416 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
6417 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
6418 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
6419 function documentation for more info.
6421 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
6422 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
6423 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
6424 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
6425 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
6426 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
6427 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
6428 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
6430 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
6432 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
6433 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
6435 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
6436 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
6437 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
6438 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
6439 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
6442 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
6443 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
6444 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
6447 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
6448 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
6449 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
6450 chapter about this in the manual.
6452 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
6453 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
6454 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
6455 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
6456 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
6458 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
6459 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
6460 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
6462 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
6463 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
6465 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
6466 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
6467 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
6470 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
6471 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
6472 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
6473 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
6476 **** The variables `c-hanging-comment-starter-p' and
6477 `c-hanging-comment-ender-p', which controlled how comment starters and
6478 enders were filled, are not used anymore. The new version of the
6479 function `c-fill-paragraph' keeps the comment starters and enders as
6480 they were before the filling.
6482 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
6483 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
6484 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
6487 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
6488 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
6489 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
6490 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
6493 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
6494 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
6495 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
6496 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
6497 Thanks to Eric Eide.
6499 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
6500 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
6501 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
6503 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
6505 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
6506 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
6507 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
6508 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
6510 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
6511 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
6512 the column specified by comment-column.
6514 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
6515 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
6516 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
6517 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
6518 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
6519 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
6521 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
6522 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
6525 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
6527 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
6528 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
6529 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
6530 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
6533 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
6537 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
6538 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
6539 is, delete only empty directories.
6541 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
6542 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
6543 copy directories recursively.
6545 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
6546 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
6547 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
6549 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
6550 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
6553 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `y') shows
6554 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
6555 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
6556 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
6557 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
6559 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
6562 *** Dired commands that prompt for a destination file now allow the use
6563 of the `M-n' command in the minibuffer to insert the source filename,
6564 which the user can then edit. This only works if there is a single
6565 source file, not when operating on multiple marked files.
6569 The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in
6570 four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment,
6571 internationalization and mail-fetching.
6573 *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the
6574 many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone.
6576 If you used procmail like in
6578 (setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
6579 (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail)
6580 (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/")
6581 (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in")
6583 this now has changed to
6586 '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/"
6589 More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods ->
6590 Getting Mail -> Mail Sources
6592 *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of
6593 Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details.
6594 Separate MIME packages like RMIME, mime-compose etc., will probably no
6595 longer work; remove them and use the native facilities.
6597 The FLIM/SEMI package still works with Emacs 21, but if you want to
6598 use the native facilities, you must remove any mailcap.el[c] that was
6599 installed by FLIM/SEMI version 1.13 or earlier.
6601 *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many
6602 parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. There
6603 are built-in facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is
6604 now just a compatibility layer.
6606 *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in
6609 *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be
6610 called to position point.
6612 *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in
6613 summary buffers and NOV files.
6615 *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number
6616 of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added.
6618 *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a
6619 subtly different manner.
6621 *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive
6622 and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with
6623 ever-changing layouts.
6625 *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap.
6627 *** There is image support of various kinds and some sound support.
6629 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
6631 *** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
6635 -------------------------
6639 C-c C-c q @quotation
6641 C-c C-o @<block> ... @end <block>
6644 *** The " key now inserts either " or `` or '' depending on context.
6646 ** Changes in Outline mode.
6648 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
6649 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
6650 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
6652 ** Changes to Emacs Server
6654 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
6655 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
6656 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
6657 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
6658 buffers to kill, as before.
6660 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
6661 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
6664 ** Both emacsclient and Emacs itself now accept command line options
6665 of the form +LINE:COLUMN in addition to +LINE.
6667 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
6669 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
6670 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
6671 use. Default is 1000.
6673 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
6674 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
6676 ** Changes to hideshow.el
6678 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
6680 A block is now recognized by its start and end regexps (both strings),
6681 and an integer specifying which sub-expression in the start regexp
6682 serves as the place where a `forward-sexp'-like function can operate.
6683 See the documentation of variable `hs-special-modes-alist'.
6685 *** During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active,
6686 hidden blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' can
6687 be used in the mode line format to show the line at the beginning of
6690 *** User option `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' specifies a
6691 function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead of
6692 the normal block-hiding function.
6694 *** The command `hs-show-region' has been removed.
6696 *** The key bindings have changed to fit the Emacs conventions,
6697 roughly imitating those of Outline minor mode. Notably, the prefix
6698 for all bindings is now `C-c @'. For details, see the documentation
6699 for `hs-minor-mode'.
6701 *** The variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' has been removed, and
6702 hideshow.el now always behaves as if this variable were set to t.
6704 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
6706 *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes
6707 an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
6708 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
6710 **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the
6713 *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries
6716 *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log
6717 entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
6718 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
6719 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
6720 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be customized.
6721 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
6723 *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock highlighting.
6725 ** Changes to cmuscheme
6727 *** The user-option `scheme-program-name' has been renamed
6728 `cmuscheme-program-name' due to conflicts with xscheme.el.
6730 ** Changes in Font Lock
6732 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
6733 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major mode.
6735 *** Multi-line patterns are now supported. Modes using this, should
6736 set font-lock-multiline to t in their font-lock-defaults.
6738 *** `font-lock-syntactic-face-function' allows major-modes to choose
6739 the face used for each string/comment.
6741 *** A new standard face `font-lock-doc-face'.
6742 Meant for Lisp docstrings, Javadoc comments and other "documentation in code".
6744 ** Changes to Shell mode
6746 *** The `shell' command now accepts an optional argument to specify the buffer
6747 to use, which defaults to "*shell*". When used interactively, a
6748 non-default buffer may be specified by giving the `shell' command a
6749 prefix argument (causing it to prompt for the buffer name).
6751 ** Comint (subshell) changes
6753 These changes generally affect all modes derived from comint mode, which
6754 include shell-mode, gdb-mode, scheme-interaction-mode, etc.
6756 *** Comint now by default interprets some carriage-control characters.
6757 Comint now removes CRs from CR LF sequences, and treats single CRs and
6758 BSs in the output in a way similar to a terminal (by deleting to the
6759 beginning of the line, or deleting the previous character,
6760 respectively). This is achieved by adding `comint-carriage-motion' to
6761 the `comint-output-filter-functions' hook by default.
6763 *** By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp'
6764 to distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which
6765 parts of the text were output by the process, and which entered by the
6766 user, and attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use
6767 this information. Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line,
6768 respect field boundaries in a fairly natural manner. To disable this
6769 feature, and use the old behavior, customize the user option
6770 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields'.
6772 *** Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
6773 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
6775 *** The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
6776 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
6777 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
6779 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
6780 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
6781 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
6783 *** Packages based on comint now highlight user input and program prompts,
6784 and support choosing previous input with mouse-2. To control these features,
6785 see the user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
6787 *** The new command `comint-write-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-s')
6788 saves the output from the most recent command to a file. With a prefix
6789 argument, it appends to the file.
6791 *** The command `comint-kill-output' has been renamed `comint-delete-output'
6792 (usually bound to `C-c C-o'); the old name is aliased to it for
6795 *** The new function `comint-add-to-input-history' adds commands to the input
6798 *** The new variable `comint-input-history-ignore' is a regexp for
6799 identifying history lines that should be ignored, like tcsh time-stamp
6800 strings, starting with a `#'. The default value of this variable is "^#".
6802 ** Changes to Rmail mode
6804 *** The new user-option rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
6805 set to fine tune the identification of the correspondent when
6806 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
6807 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
6808 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
6811 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
6812 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
6813 regexp matching your mail addresses.
6815 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
6816 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
6817 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
6818 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
6819 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
6821 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
6824 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
6825 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
6828 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
6829 in which folder to put messages automatically.
6831 *** The new function `rmail-redecode-body' allows to fix a message
6832 with non-ASCII characters if Emacs happens to decode it incorrectly
6833 due to missing or malformed "charset=" header.
6835 ** The new user-option `mail-envelope-from' can be used to specify
6836 an envelope-from address different from user-mail-address.
6838 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
6839 use the -f option when sending mail.
6841 ** The Rmail command `o' (`rmail-output-to-rmail-file') now writes the
6842 current message in the internal `emacs-mule' encoding, rather than in
6843 the encoding taken from the variable `buffer-file-coding-system'.
6844 This allows to save messages whose characters cannot be safely encoded
6845 by the buffer's coding system, and makes sure the message will be
6846 displayed correctly when you later visit the target Rmail file.
6848 If you want your Rmail files be encoded in a specific coding system
6849 other than `emacs-mule', you can customize the variable
6850 `rmail-file-coding-system' to set its value to that coding system.
6852 ** Changes to TeX mode
6854 *** The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
6857 *** latex-mode now has a simple indentation algorithm.
6859 *** M-f and M-p jump around \begin...\end pairs.
6861 *** Added support for outline-minor-mode.
6863 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
6865 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
6866 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
6867 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
6868 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
6869 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
6870 can be edited from that buffer.
6872 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
6873 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
6874 `A' to use all marked entries).
6876 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
6877 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
6879 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
6880 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
6881 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
6884 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
6885 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
6886 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
6887 in column 1 are always made leaves.
6889 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
6890 has the following new features:
6892 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
6893 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
6894 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
6895 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
6897 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
6898 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
6899 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
6900 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
6901 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
6904 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
6909 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
6910 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
6911 spell-checks the current buffer.
6913 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
6916 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
6917 correction is made and re-checked.
6919 *** Italian, Portuguese, and Slovak dictionary definitions have been added.
6921 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
6924 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
6927 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
6930 *** Spell checking now works in the MS-DOS version of Emacs.
6932 ** Makefile mode changes
6934 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
6936 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
6937 Fontlock mode is active.
6941 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
6942 so that searches can be resumed.
6944 *** In Isearch mode, C-M-s and C-M-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
6945 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
6946 that started the search.
6948 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
6949 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
6951 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
6953 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
6954 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
6955 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
6956 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
6957 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
6958 `secondary-selection'.
6960 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
6961 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
6962 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
6963 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
6964 usual snappy response.
6966 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
6967 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
6968 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
6969 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
6973 VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it
6974 easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp
6975 Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism
6976 to enable and disable support for particular version systems has
6977 changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable
6978 `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of symbols that identify
6979 version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file,
6980 each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the
6981 file is registered in that backend.
6983 When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed
6984 backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the
6985 directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for
6986 master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then
6987 the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen.
6988 As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete.
6990 The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC
6991 still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for
6992 RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables
6993 vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS
6994 where it doesn't make sense.)
6996 The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also
6997 obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude
6998 `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now.
7002 The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding
7003 checks are always done now.
7005 VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control
7008 `vc-diff' output is now displayed in `diff-mode'.
7009 `vc-print-log' uses `log-view-mode'.
7010 `vc-log-mode' (used for *VC-Log*) has been replaced by `log-edit-mode'.
7012 The command C-x v m (vc-merge) now accepts an empty argument as the
7013 first revision number. This means that any recent changes on the
7014 current branch should be picked up from the repository and merged into
7015 the working file (``merge news'').
7017 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
7018 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) now ask for a directory name from which to work
7021 *** Multiple Backends
7023 VC now lets you register files in more than one backend. This is
7024 useful, for example, if you are working with a slow remote CVS
7025 repository. You can then use RCS for local editing, and occasionally
7026 commit your changes back to CVS, or pick up changes from CVS into your
7029 To make this work, the ``more local'' backend (RCS in our example)
7030 should come first in `vc-handled-backends', and the ``more remote''
7031 backend (CVS) should come later. (The default value of
7032 `vc-handled-backends' already has it that way.)
7034 You can then commit changes to another backend (say, RCS), by typing
7035 C-u C-x v v RCS RET (i.e. vc-next-action now accepts a backend name as
7036 a revision number). VC registers the file in the more local backend
7037 if that hasn't already happened, and commits to a branch based on the
7038 current revision number from the more remote backend.
7040 If a file is registered in multiple backends, you can switch to
7041 another one using C-x v b (vc-switch-backend). This does not change
7042 any files, it only changes VC's perspective on the file. Use this to
7043 pick up changes from CVS while working under RCS locally.
7045 After you are done with your local RCS editing, you can commit your
7046 changes back to CVS using C-u C-x v v CVS RET. In this case, the
7047 local RCS archive is removed after the commit, and the log entry
7048 buffer is initialized to contain the entire RCS change log of the file.
7052 There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the
7053 default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in
7054 remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined
7055 by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a
7056 regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts
7057 that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC
7058 queries the repository just as often as it does for local files.
7060 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, then VC also makes local backups of
7061 repository versions. This means that ordinary diffs (C-x v =) and
7062 revert operations (C-x v u) can be done completely locally, without
7063 any repository interactions at all. The name of a local version
7064 backup of FILE is FILE.~REV.~, where REV is the repository version
7065 number. This format is similar to that used by C-x v ~
7066 (vc-version-other-window), except for the trailing dot. As a matter
7067 of fact, the two features can each use the files created by the other,
7068 the only difference being that files with a trailing `.' are deleted
7069 automatically after commit. (This feature doesn't work on MS-DOS,
7070 since DOS disallows more than a single dot in the trunk of a file
7073 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the
7074 repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit.
7075 If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to
7076 commit, you can either use C-x v m RET to perform an update on the
7077 current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an
7078 entire directory tree.
7080 The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call
7081 "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option
7082 is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are
7083 "watched" by other developers.)
7085 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
7086 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) are now also implemented for CVS. If you give
7087 an empty snapshot name to the latter, that performs a `cvs update',
7088 starting at the given directory.
7090 *** Lisp Changes in VC
7092 VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now
7093 add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a
7094 library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and
7095 then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for
7096 a version system named SYS, you write a library named vc-sys.el, which
7097 provides a number of functions vc-sys-... (see commentary at the top
7098 of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library,
7099 you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the symbol
7100 `SYS' to the list `vc-handled-backends'.
7102 ** The customizable EDT emulation package now supports the EDT
7103 SUBS command and EDT scroll margins. It also works with more
7104 terminal/keyboard configurations and it now works under XEmacs.
7105 See etc/edt-user.doc for more information.
7107 ** New modes and packages
7109 *** The new global minor mode `minibuffer-electric-default-mode'
7110 automatically hides the `(default ...)' part of minibuffer prompts when
7111 the default is not applicable.
7113 *** Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines,
7114 rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. The
7115 shapes are made up with the ascii characters |, -, / and \.
7119 - Intersecting: When a `|' intersects with a `-', a `+' is
7120 drawn, like this: | \ /
7124 - Rubber-banding: When drawing lines you can interactively see the
7125 result while holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse. If
7126 your machine is not fast enough (a 386 is a bit too slow, but a
7127 pentium is well enough), you can turn this feature off. You will
7128 then see 1's and 2's which mark the 1st and 2nd endpoint of the line
7131 - Arrows: After having drawn a (straight) line or a (straight)
7132 poly-line, you can set arrows on the line-ends by typing < or >.
7134 - Flood-filling: You can fill any area with a certain character by
7137 - Cut copy and paste: You can cut, copy and paste rectangular
7138 regions. Artist also interfaces with the rect package (this can be
7139 turned off if it causes you any trouble) so anything you cut in
7140 artist can be yanked with C-x r y and vice versa.
7142 - Drawing with keys: Everything you can do with the mouse, you can
7143 also do without the mouse.
7145 - Aspect-ratio: You can set the variable artist-aspect-ratio to
7146 reflect the height-width ratio for the font you are using. Squares
7147 and circles are then drawn square/round. Note, that once your
7148 ascii-file is shown with font with a different height-width ratio,
7149 the squares won't be square and the circles won't be round.
7151 - Drawing operations: The following drawing operations are implemented:
7153 lines straight-lines
7155 poly-lines straight poly-lines
7157 text (see-thru) text (overwrite)
7158 spray-can setting size for spraying
7159 vaporize line vaporize lines
7160 erase characters erase rectangles
7162 Straight lines are lines that go horizontally, vertically or
7163 diagonally. Plain lines go in any direction. The operations in
7164 the right column are accessed by holding down the shift key while
7167 It is possible to vaporize (erase) entire lines and connected lines
7168 (rectangles for example) as long as the lines being vaporized are
7169 straight and connected at their endpoints. Vaporizing is inspired
7170 by the drawrect package by Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>.
7172 - Picture mode compatibility: Artist is picture mode compatible (this
7175 *** The new package Eshell is an operating system command shell
7176 implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp. Use `M-x eshell' to invoke it.
7177 It functions similarly to bash and zsh, and allows running of Lisp
7178 functions and external commands using the same syntax. It supports
7179 history lists, aliases, extended globbing, smart scrolling, etc. It
7180 will work on any platform Emacs has been ported to. And since most of
7181 the basic commands -- ls, rm, mv, cp, ln, du, cat, etc. -- have been
7182 rewritten in Lisp, it offers an operating-system independent shell,
7183 all within the scope of your Emacs process.
7185 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
7186 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
7187 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
7188 on certain projects.
7190 *** The new package hi-lock.el provides commands to highlight matches
7191 of interactively entered regexps. For example,
7193 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
7195 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
7196 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
7197 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
7198 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
7199 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
7200 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
7201 corresponding file is read. There are commands to highlight matches
7202 to phrases and to highlight entire lines containing a match.
7204 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
7207 *** The new package tildify.el allows to add hard spaces or other text
7208 fragments in accordance with the current major mode.
7210 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
7211 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
7213 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
7214 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
7215 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
7216 `comment-region' now doesn't always comment a-line-at-a-time, but only
7217 comments the region, breaking the line at point if necessary.
7219 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
7220 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
7221 separate Texinfo file.
7223 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
7224 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
7225 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
7226 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
7227 enter check-in log messages.
7229 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
7230 without invoking external programs.
7232 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
7233 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
7234 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
7235 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
7236 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
7238 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
7239 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
7241 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
7242 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
7244 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
7245 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
7246 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
7247 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
7248 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
7251 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
7252 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
7253 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
7254 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
7256 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
7257 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
7258 actually modifying content of a buffer.
7260 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
7263 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
7265 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
7267 ; comment (until end of line)
7271 $A default non-terminal
7272 $"C" default terminal
7273 $?C? default special
7274 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
7275 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
7276 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
7277 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
7278 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
7279 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
7280 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
7281 C+ one or more occurrences of C
7282 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
7283 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
7284 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
7285 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
7286 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
7287 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
7288 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
7290 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
7292 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
7293 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
7294 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
7295 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
7296 equal signs of assignments.
7298 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
7299 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
7301 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
7302 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
7303 buffer menu with this package. See the Custom group `bs'.
7305 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
7307 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
7308 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
7309 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
7310 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
7311 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
7312 which answers different needs.
7314 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
7315 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
7316 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
7317 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
7318 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
7321 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
7322 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
7324 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
7326 *** hl-line.el provides `hl-line-mode', a minor mode to highlight the
7327 current line in the current buffer. It also provides
7328 `global-hl-line-mode' to provide the same behavior in all buffers.
7330 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
7332 Please note: if `ansi-color-for-comint-mode' and
7333 `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will
7334 disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to
7335 `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This
7336 displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground
7337 and background colors.
7339 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
7342 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
7345 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
7347 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
7349 *** whitespace.el is a package for warning about and cleaning bogus
7350 whitespace in a file.
7352 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
7353 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
7354 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
7355 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
7356 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
7357 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
7358 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
7360 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
7362 Here is an example of columns:
7365 dog pineapple car EXTRA
7366 porcupine strawberry airplane
7368 Doing the following settings:
7370 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
7371 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
7372 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
7373 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
7376 Selecting the lines above and typing:
7378 M-x delimit-columns-region
7382 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
7383 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
7384 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
7386 delim-col has the following options:
7388 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
7391 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
7392 between each column.
7394 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
7397 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
7400 delim-col has the following commands:
7402 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
7403 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
7405 *** Recentf mode maintains a menu for visiting files that were
7406 operated on recently. User option recentf-menu-filter specifies a
7407 menu filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the
7408 recent file list can be displayed:
7410 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
7411 - sorted by file paths, file names, ascending or descending.
7412 - showing paths relative to the current default-directory
7414 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
7415 dynamically change the menu appearance.
7417 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
7420 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
7421 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
7422 specific to Message mode.
7424 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
7425 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
7426 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
7428 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
7429 interface to access directory servers using different directory
7430 protocols. It has a separate manual.
7432 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
7433 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
7435 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
7437 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
7438 minibuffer with completion.
7440 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
7441 with the diary features.
7443 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
7444 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
7446 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
7449 *** pcomplete.el is a library that provides programmable completion
7450 facilities for Emacs, similar to what zsh and tcsh offer. The main
7451 difference is that completion functions are written in Lisp, meaning
7452 they can be profiled, debugged, etc.
7454 *** antlr-mode is a new major mode for editing ANTLR grammar files.
7455 It is automatically turned on for files whose names have the extension
7458 ** Changes in sort.el
7460 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
7461 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
7462 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
7465 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
7467 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
7468 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
7469 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
7471 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
7472 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
7474 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
7475 output ^M at the end of lines.
7477 ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor
7478 mode `iswitchb-mode'.
7480 ** Just loading the msb package doesn't switch on Msb mode anymore.
7481 If you have `(require 'msb)' in your .emacs, please replace it with
7484 ** Flyspell mode has various new options. See the `flyspell' Custom
7487 ** The user option `backward-delete-char-untabify-method' controls the
7488 behavior of `backward-delete-char-untabify'. The following values
7491 `untabify' -- turn a tab to many spaces, then delete one space;
7492 `hungry' -- delete all whitespace, both tabs and spaces;
7493 `all' -- delete all whitespace, including tabs, spaces and newlines;
7494 nil -- just delete one character.
7496 Default value is `untabify'.
7498 [This change was made in Emacs 20.3 but not mentioned then.]
7500 ** In Cperl mode `cperl-invalid-face' should now be a normal face
7501 symbol, not double-quoted.
7503 ** Some packages are declared obsolete, to be removed in a future
7504 version. They are: auto-show, c-mode, hilit19, hscroll, ooutline,
7505 profile, rnews, rnewspost, and sc. Their implementations have been
7506 moved to lisp/obsolete.
7508 ** auto-compression mode is no longer enabled just by loading jka-compr.el.
7509 To control it, set `auto-compression-mode' via Custom or use the
7510 `auto-compression-mode' command.
7512 ** `browse-url-gnome-moz' is a new option for
7513 `browse-url-browser-function', invoking Mozilla in GNOME, and
7514 `browse-url-kde' can be chosen for invoking the KDE browser.
7516 ** The user-option `browse-url-new-window-p' has been renamed to
7517 `browse-url-new-window-flag'.
7519 ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now
7520 operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode.
7522 ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It
7523 is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia.
7525 ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM
7526 support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode,
7527 use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the
7528 buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands
7529 M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a
7530 new command M-x strokes-list-strokes.
7532 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
7533 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
7535 ** Hexl mode allows to insert non-ASCII characters.
7537 The non-ASCII characters are encoded using the same encoding as the
7538 file you are visiting in Hexl mode.
7540 ** Shell script mode changes.
7542 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
7543 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizable, and
7544 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
7548 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
7550 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
7551 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
7552 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
7553 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
7554 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
7556 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
7557 declarations when given the --declarations option.
7559 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
7560 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
7562 *** You shouldn't generally need any more the -C or -c++ option: etags
7563 automatically switches to C++ parsing when it meets the `class' or
7564 `template' keywords.
7566 *** Etags now is able to delve at arbitrary deeps into nested structures in
7567 C-like languages. Previously, it was limited to one or two brace levels.
7569 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
7572 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
7574 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
7576 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
7579 *** In makefiles, tags the targets.
7581 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
7582 variables are tagged.
7584 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
7586 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
7589 ** Changes in etags.el
7591 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
7592 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
7593 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
7595 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
7596 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
7598 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
7599 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
7600 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
7601 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
7603 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
7605 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
7606 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
7608 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
7610 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
7611 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
7612 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
7614 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
7615 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
7617 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
7618 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
7620 *** You can now search for tags that are part of the filename itself.
7621 If you have tagged the files topfile.c subdir/subfile.c
7622 /tmp/tempfile.c, you can now search for tags "topfile.c", "subfile.c",
7623 "dir/sub", "tempfile", "tempfile.c". If the tag matches the file name,
7624 point will go to the beginning of the file.
7626 *** Compressed files are now transparently supported if
7627 auto-compression-mode is active. You can tag (with Etags) and search
7628 (with find-tag) both compressed and uncompressed files.
7630 *** Tags commands like M-x tags-search no longer change point
7631 in buffers where no match is found. In buffers where a match is
7632 found, the original value of point is pushed on the marker ring.
7634 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
7635 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
7636 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
7638 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
7640 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
7642 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps'
7643 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
7644 expression from that list, are not checked.
7646 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
7647 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
7648 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
7649 the buffer, just like for the local files.
7651 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
7653 ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now
7654 displays local abbrevs, only.
7656 ** Refill minor mode provides preliminary support for keeping
7657 paragraphs filled as you modify them.
7659 ** The variable `double-click-fuzz' specifies how much the mouse
7660 may be moved between clicks that are recognized as a pair. Its value
7661 is measured in pixels.
7663 ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files
7664 to be visited as images.
7666 ** Two new user-options `grep-command' and `grep-find-command'
7667 were added to compile.el.
7669 ** Withdrawn packages
7671 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
7672 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
7674 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
7676 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
7679 * Incompatible Lisp changes
7681 There are a few Lisp changes which are not backwards-compatible and
7682 may require changes to existing code. Here is a list for reference.
7683 See the sections below for details.
7685 ** Since `format' preserves text properties, the idiom
7686 `(format "%s" foo)' no longer works to copy and remove properties.
7687 Use `copy-sequence' to copy the string, then use `set-text-properties'
7688 to remove the properties of the copy.
7690 ** Since the `keymap' text property now has significance, some code
7691 which uses both `local-map' and `keymap' properties (for portability)
7692 may, for instance, give rise to duplicate menus when the keymaps from
7693 these properties are active.
7695 ** The change in the treatment of non-ASCII characters in search
7696 ranges may affect some code.
7698 ** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook
7699 buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might
7700 make a difference to some code.
7702 ** The new treatment of the minibuffer prompt might affect code which
7703 operates on the minibuffer.
7705 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
7706 cause `no-conversion' and `emacs-mule-unix' coding systems to produce
7707 different results when reading files with non-ASCII characters
7708 (previously, both coding systems would produce the same results).
7709 Specifically, `no-conversion' interprets each 8-bit byte as a separate
7710 character. This makes `no-conversion' inappropriate for reading
7711 multibyte text, e.g. buffers written to disk in their internal MULE
7712 encoding (auto-saving does that, for example). If a Lisp program
7713 reads such files with `no-conversion', each byte of the multibyte
7714 sequence, including the MULE leading codes such as \201, is treated as
7715 a separate character, which prevents them from being interpreted in
7716 the buffer as multibyte characters.
7718 Therefore, Lisp programs that read files which contain the internal
7719 MULE encoding should use `emacs-mule-unix'. `no-conversion' is only
7720 appropriate for reading truly binary files.
7722 ** Code that relies on the obsolete `before-change-function' and
7723 `after-change-function' to detect buffer changes will now fail. Use
7724 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead.
7726 ** Code that uses `concat' with integer args now gets an error, as
7727 long promised. So does any code that uses derivatives of `concat',
7728 such as `mapconcat'.
7730 ** The function base64-decode-string now always returns a unibyte
7733 ** Not a Lisp incompatibility as such but, with the introduction of
7734 extra private charsets, there is now only one slot free for a new
7735 dimension-2 private charset. User code which tries to add more than
7736 one extra will fail unless you rebuild Emacs with some standard
7737 charset(s) removed; that is probably inadvisable because it changes
7738 the emacs-mule encoding. Also, files stored in the emacs-mule
7739 encoding using Emacs 20 with additional private charsets defined will
7740 probably not be read correctly by Emacs 21.
7742 ** The variable `directory-sep-char' is slated for removal.
7743 Not really a change (yet), but a projected one that you should be
7744 aware of: The variable `directory-sep-char' is deprecated, and should
7745 not be used. It was always ignored on GNU/Linux and Unix systems and
7746 on MS-DOS, but the MS-Windows port tried to support it by adapting the
7747 behavior of certain primitives to the value of this variable. It
7748 turned out that such support cannot be reliable, so it was decided to
7749 remove this variable in the near future. Lisp programs are well
7750 advised not to set it to anything but '/', because any different value
7751 will not have any effect when support for this variable is removed.
7754 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
7755 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
7757 ** Function assq-delete-all replaces function assoc-delete-all.
7759 ** The new function animate-string, from lisp/play/animate.el
7760 allows the animated display of strings.
7762 ** The new function `interactive-form' can be used to obtain the
7763 interactive form of a function.
7765 ** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
7766 between custom options. Example:
7768 (defcustom default-input-method nil
7769 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
7770 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
7771 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
7773 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
7774 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
7776 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
7777 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
7778 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
7780 ** The new hook `kbd-macro-termination-hook' is run at the end of
7781 function execute-kbd-macro. Functions on this hook are called with no
7782 args. The hook is run independent of how the macro was terminated
7783 (signal or normal termination).
7785 ** Functions `butlast' and `nbutlast' for removing trailing elements
7786 from a list are now available without requiring the CL package.
7788 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
7789 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
7791 ** The user-option `face-font-registry-alternatives' specifies
7792 alternative font registry names to try when looking for a font.
7794 ** Function `md5' calculates the MD5 "message digest"/"checksum".
7796 ** Function `delete-frame' runs `delete-frame-hook' before actually
7797 deleting the frame. The hook is called with one arg, the frame
7800 ** `add-hook' now makes the hook local if called with a non-nil LOCAL arg.
7802 ** The treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges has changed.
7803 If a range in a regular expression or the arg of
7804 skip-chars-forward/backward starts with a unibyte character C and ends
7805 with a multibyte character C2, the range is divided into two: one is
7806 C..?\377, the other is C1..C2, where C1 is the first character of C2's
7809 ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in
7810 the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the
7813 ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an
7814 expression with auto-compression-mode enabled.
7816 ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced
7817 with the more general `:mask' property.
7819 ** Image specifications accept more `:conversion's.
7821 ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a
7824 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
7825 is running in batch mode. For example,
7827 (message "%s" (read t))
7829 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
7832 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
7833 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
7835 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
7836 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
7839 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
7842 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
7844 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurrences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
7845 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
7847 - Function: remq ELT LIST
7849 Return a copy of LIST with all occurrences of ELT removed. The
7850 comparison is done with `eq'.
7852 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
7854 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
7855 has been changed: WEAK can now have new values `key-or-value' and
7856 `key-and-value', in addition to `nil', `key', `value', and `t'.
7858 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
7859 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
7860 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
7862 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
7863 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
7865 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
7866 function was declared obsolete.
7868 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
7869 retained as an alias).
7871 ** Easy-menu's :filter now takes the unconverted form of the menu and
7872 the result is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
7874 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
7876 - Function: window-list &optional FRAME WINDOW MINIBUF
7878 Return a list of windows on FRAME, starting with WINDOW. FRAME nil or
7879 omitted means use the selected frame. WINDOW nil or omitted means use
7880 the selected window. MINIBUF t means include the minibuffer window,
7881 even if it isn't active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means include the
7882 minibuffer window only if it's active. MINIBUF neither nil nor t
7883 means never include the minibuffer window.
7885 ** There's a new function `get-window-with-predicate' defined as follows
7887 - Function: get-window-with-predicate PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
7889 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
7891 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
7892 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
7893 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
7894 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
7897 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
7898 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
7899 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
7900 minibuffer even if it is active.
7902 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
7903 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
7904 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
7905 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
7906 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
7907 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
7909 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
7910 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
7911 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
7912 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
7913 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
7914 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
7915 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
7917 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
7918 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
7919 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
7921 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
7922 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
7923 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
7924 Default value is nil.
7926 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
7929 ** The new user option `line-number-display-limit-width' controls
7930 the maximum width of lines in a buffer for which Emacs displays line
7931 numbers in the mode line. The default is 200.
7933 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
7934 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
7935 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
7937 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information about the argument
7938 list of a primitive.
7940 ** `where-is-internal' now also accepts a list of keymaps.
7942 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
7943 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
7944 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
7945 than replacing the local map.
7947 ** The obsolete variables `before-change-function' and
7948 `after-change-function' are no longer acted upon and have been
7949 removed. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions'
7952 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
7954 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments,
7955 as promised long ago.
7957 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
7959 ** The new variable auto-coding-regexp-alist specifies coding systems
7960 for reading specific files, analogous to auto-coding-alist, but
7961 patterns are checked against file contents instead of file names.
7964 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
7966 ** The new package rx.el provides an alternative sexp notation for
7967 regular expressions.
7969 - Function: rx-to-string SEXP
7971 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
7975 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
7977 The following are valid subforms of regular expressions in sexp
7981 matches string STRING literally.
7984 matches character CHAR literally.
7987 matches any character except a newline.
7990 matches any character
7993 matches any character in SET. SET may be a character or string.
7994 Ranges of characters can be specified as `A-Z' in strings.
8000 matches any character not in SET
8003 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a line
8004 in the text being matched
8007 is similar to `line-start' but matches only at the end of a line
8010 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
8011 string being matched against.
8014 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
8015 string being matched against.
8018 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
8019 buffer being matched against.
8022 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
8023 buffer being matched against.
8026 matches the empty string, but only at point.
8029 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
8033 matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word.
8036 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
8039 `(not word-boundary)'
8040 matches the empty string, but not at the beginning or end of a
8044 matches 0 through 9.
8047 matches ASCII control characters.
8050 matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
8053 matches space and tab only.
8056 matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
8060 matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
8064 matches letters and digits. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
8065 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
8068 matches letters. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
8069 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
8072 matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
8075 matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
8078 matches anything lower-case.
8081 matches anything upper-case.
8084 matches punctuation. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
8085 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
8088 matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
8091 matches anything that has word syntax.
8094 matches a character with syntax SYNTAX. SYNTAX must be one
8095 of the following symbols.
8097 `whitespace' (\\s- in string notation)
8098 `punctuation' (\\s.)
8101 `open-parenthesis' (\\s()
8102 `close-parenthesis' (\\s))
8103 `expression-prefix' (\\s')
8104 `string-quote' (\\s\")
8105 `paired-delimiter' (\\s$)
8107 `character-quote' (\\s/)
8108 `comment-start' (\\s<)
8109 `comment-end' (\\s>)
8111 `(not (syntax SYNTAX))'
8112 matches a character that has not syntax SYNTAX.
8114 `(category CATEGORY)'
8115 matches a character with category CATEGORY. CATEGORY must be
8116 either a character to use for C, or one of the following symbols.
8118 `consonant' (\\c0 in string notation)
8120 `upper-diacritical-mark' (\\c2)
8121 `lower-diacritical-mark' (\\c3)
8125 `vowel-modifying-diacritical-mark' (\\c7)
8127 `semivowel-lower' (\\c9)
8128 `not-at-end-of-line' (\\c<)
8129 `not-at-beginning-of-line' (\\c>)
8130 `alpha-numeric-two-byte' (\\cA)
8131 `chinse-two-byte' (\\cC)
8132 `greek-two-byte' (\\cG)
8133 `japanese-hiragana-two-byte' (\\cH)
8134 `indian-two-byte' (\\cI)
8135 `japanese-katakana-two-byte' (\\cK)
8136 `korean-hangul-two-byte' (\\cN)
8137 `cyrillic-two-byte' (\\cY)
8146 `japanese-katakana' (\\ck)
8150 `japanese-roman' (\\cr)
8157 `(not (category CATEGORY))'
8158 matches a character that has not category CATEGORY.
8160 `(and SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
8161 matches what SEXP1 matches, followed by what SEXP2 matches, etc.
8163 `(submatch SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
8164 like `and', but makes the match accessible with `match-end',
8165 `match-beginning', and `match-string'.
8167 `(group SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
8168 another name for `submatch'.
8170 `(or SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
8171 matches anything that matches SEXP1 or SEXP2, etc. If all
8172 args are strings, use `regexp-opt' to optimize the resulting
8175 `(minimal-match SEXP)'
8176 produce a non-greedy regexp for SEXP. Normally, regexps matching
8177 zero or more occurrences of something are \"greedy\" in that they
8178 match as much as they can, as long as the overall regexp can
8179 still match. A non-greedy regexp matches as little as possible.
8181 `(maximal-match SEXP)'
8182 produce a greedy regexp for SEXP. This is the default.
8184 `(zero-or-more SEXP)'
8185 matches zero or more occurrences of what SEXP matches.
8188 like `zero-or-more'.
8191 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
8194 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
8196 `(one-or-more SEXP)'
8197 matches one or more occurrences of A.
8203 like `one-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
8206 like `one-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
8208 `(zero-or-one SEXP)'
8209 matches zero or one occurrences of A.
8215 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a greedy regexp.
8218 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
8221 matches N occurrences of what SEXP matches.
8224 matches N to M occurrences of what SEXP matches.
8227 evaluate FORM and insert result. If result is a string,
8231 include REGEXP in string notation in the result.
8233 *** The features `md5' and `overlay' are now provided by default.
8235 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
8236 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
8237 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
8238 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
8240 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
8241 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
8242 when they find 8-bit characters. Previously, they included `ascii' in a
8243 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
8245 *** The functions `set-buffer-multibyte', `string-as-multibyte' and
8246 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer or a string
8247 if it contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
8249 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
8250 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
8251 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
8252 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
8253 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
8254 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
8255 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
8258 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
8260 A fontset can now be specified for each independent character, for
8261 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
8262 character set as previously.
8264 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
8265 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
8266 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
8268 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
8269 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
8270 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
8271 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
8273 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
8274 name of a font and REGISTRY is a registry name of a font.
8276 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
8277 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
8280 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
8281 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
8283 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
8284 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
8285 buffers and strings.
8287 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
8288 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
8289 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
8290 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
8291 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
8292 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
8293 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
8296 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
8297 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
8298 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
8300 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
8301 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
8302 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
8303 may differ between buffer and string text.
8305 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
8306 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
8308 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
8309 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
8310 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
8311 `composition' from STRING.
8313 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
8314 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
8316 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
8319 ** The new coding system `mac-roman' is primarily intended for use on
8320 the Macintosh but may be used generally for Macintosh-encoded text.
8322 ** The new character sets `mule-unicode-0100-24ff',
8323 `mule-unicode-2500-33ff', and `mule-unicode-e000-ffff' have been
8324 introduced for Unicode characters in the range U+0100..U+24FF,
8325 U+2500..U+33FF, U+E000..U+FFFF respectively.
8327 Note that the character sets are not yet unified in Emacs, so
8328 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
8329 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
8330 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
8331 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
8332 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system.
8334 ** The new coding system `mule-utf-8' has been added.
8335 It provides limited support for decoding/encoding UTF-8 text. For
8336 details, please see the documentation string of this coding system.
8338 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
8339 `japanese-jisx0213-2' have been introduced for the new Japanese
8340 standard JIS X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
8342 ** The new character sets `latin-iso8859-14' and `latin-iso8859-15'
8343 have been introduced.
8345 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
8346 have been introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
8347 0xA0..0xFF respectively. Note that the multibyte representation of
8348 eight-bit-control is never exposed; this leads to an exception in the
8349 emacs-mule coding system, which encodes everything else to the
8350 buffer/string internal representation. Note that to search for
8351 eight-bit-graphic characters in a multibyte buffer, the search string
8352 must be multibyte, otherwise such characters will be converted to
8353 their multibyte equivalent.
8355 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
8356 that offset in the file before writing.
8358 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
8359 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
8361 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
8362 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
8363 from which the command was issued.
8365 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
8366 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
8367 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
8368 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
8371 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
8372 to `window-buffer-height'.
8374 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
8376 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
8377 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
8378 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
8380 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
8383 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optional third argument
8384 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
8386 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
8387 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
8388 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
8390 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
8391 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
8392 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
8393 is currently displayed in some window.
8395 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
8396 argument function's results.
8398 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
8399 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails. Also,
8400 `base64-decode-string' now always returns a unibyte string (in Emacs
8401 20, it returned a multibyte string when the result was a valid multibyte
8404 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
8405 header in the list of headers passed to it.
8407 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
8408 ignores differences in case and text representation.
8410 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
8411 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
8414 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
8415 nil don't display a cursor
8416 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
8417 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
8418 others display a box cursor.
8420 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
8421 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
8422 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
8423 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
8425 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
8426 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
8427 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
8428 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
8432 (string-to-syntax "()")
8435 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
8438 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
8439 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
8446 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
8451 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
8456 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
8463 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
8464 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
8467 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
8468 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
8469 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
8470 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
8472 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
8474 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
8475 for a regexp in a string.
8477 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
8478 `mouse-position-function'.
8480 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
8481 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
8483 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
8484 Keywords are now always considered constants.
8486 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
8489 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
8490 returned by function `recent-keys'.
8492 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
8493 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
8494 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding C-M-a
8495 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
8498 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
8499 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
8501 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
8502 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
8503 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
8504 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
8507 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
8508 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
8509 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
8510 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
8512 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
8513 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
8514 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
8516 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
8517 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
8520 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
8522 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
8523 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
8524 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
8527 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
8528 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
8529 Also back-references like \2 are now considered as an error if the
8530 corresponding subgroup does not exist (or is not closed yet).
8531 Previously it would have been silently turned into `2' (ignoring the `\').
8533 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
8534 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
8536 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
8537 instead of being optional.
8539 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
8540 modify read-only text.
8542 ** New functions and variables for locales.
8544 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
8545 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
8546 time functions like strftime. The new variables
8547 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
8548 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
8550 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
8551 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
8552 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
8553 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
8554 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
8555 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
8556 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
8558 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
8559 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
8560 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
8563 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
8564 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
8566 ** New function `propertize'
8568 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
8569 strings with text properties.
8571 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
8573 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
8574 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
8575 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
8576 specified value of that property. Example:
8578 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
8580 ** push and pop macros.
8582 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
8583 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
8584 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
8586 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
8587 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
8588 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
8590 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
8592 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
8593 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
8595 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
8596 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
8597 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
8598 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
8600 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
8601 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
8602 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
8603 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
8605 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such as
8606 [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on. These must be used within a character
8607 class--for instance, [-[:digit:].+] matches digits or a period
8610 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
8611 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
8612 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
8613 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
8614 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
8616 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
8618 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
8619 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
8620 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
8621 [:alpha:] matches letters.
8622 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
8623 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
8624 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
8625 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
8626 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
8627 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
8628 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
8629 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
8630 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
8631 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
8632 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
8634 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
8636 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
8638 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
8640 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
8641 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
8645 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
8646 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
8647 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
8651 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
8652 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
8654 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
8656 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
8657 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
8658 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
8659 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
8660 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
8662 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
8664 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
8665 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
8666 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
8670 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
8671 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
8672 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
8673 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
8674 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
8676 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
8678 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
8680 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
8682 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
8684 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
8686 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
8689 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
8691 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
8693 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
8695 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
8697 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
8699 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
8701 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
8703 Returns the size of TABLE.
8705 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
8707 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
8709 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
8711 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
8713 - Function: clrhash TABLE
8717 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
8719 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
8722 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
8724 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
8725 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
8727 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
8729 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
8731 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
8733 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
8734 arguments KEY and VALUE.
8736 - Function: sxhash OBJ
8738 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
8740 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
8742 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
8743 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
8744 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
8745 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
8746 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
8748 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
8750 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
8751 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
8752 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
8754 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
8755 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
8757 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
8758 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
8760 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
8761 (sxhash (upcase a)))
8763 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
8764 'case-fold-string-hash))
8766 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
8768 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
8770 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
8771 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
8772 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
8774 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
8776 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
8777 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
8779 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
8780 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
8781 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
8782 is too short to reach that column.
8784 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
8785 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
8786 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
8787 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
8789 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
8790 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
8791 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
8793 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
8794 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
8796 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
8797 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
8799 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
8800 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
8801 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
8802 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
8803 temporary-file-directory instead.
8805 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
8806 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
8807 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
8808 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
8810 ** assq-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
8811 elements of an alist which have a car `eq' to a particular value.
8813 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
8815 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
8816 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
8817 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
8819 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
8821 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
8822 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
8823 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
8824 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
8825 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
8826 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
8828 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
8829 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
8830 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
8831 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
8833 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
8835 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
8836 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
8837 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
8840 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
8841 string where arguments appear in the result string.
8845 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
8847 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
8848 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
8851 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
8853 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
8855 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
8856 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
8859 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
8861 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
8862 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
8867 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
8868 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
8870 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
8871 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
8872 to enable sound support.
8874 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
8875 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
8876 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
8877 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
8878 sound to play, before playing the sound.
8880 The following sound properties are supported:
8884 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
8885 searched relative to `data-directory'.
8889 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
8890 may be present, but not both.
8894 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
8895 0..1. This property is optional.
8899 DEVICE is a string specifying the system device on which to play the
8900 sound. The default device is system-dependent.
8902 Other properties are ignored.
8904 An alternative interface is called as
8905 (play-sound-file FILE &optional VOLUME DEVICE).
8907 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
8909 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
8912 ** Changes to garbage collection
8914 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
8915 of live and free strings.
8917 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
8918 strings that have been consed so far.
8921 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
8924 ** The user-option `resize-mini-windows' controls how Emacs resizes
8927 ** The function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now has a third optional
8928 argument, PARTIALLY. If a character is only partially visible, nil is
8929 returned, unless PARTIALLY is non-nil.
8931 ** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used.
8933 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
8935 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
8938 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
8940 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
8942 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
8943 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
8944 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
8945 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
8946 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
8948 ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image
8951 - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME
8953 Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap.
8954 FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil
8955 or omitted means use the selected frame.
8957 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
8958 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
8960 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
8963 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see
8967 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
8969 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
8970 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
8972 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
8973 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
8974 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
8975 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
8976 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
8977 just display it black instead.
8979 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
8982 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
8986 ** New face implementation.
8988 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
8989 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
8993 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
8995 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
8997 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
8998 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
9000 3. Font height in 1/10pt
9002 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
9004 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
9006 6. Foreground color.
9008 7. Background color.
9010 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
9012 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
9014 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
9016 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
9018 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
9021 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
9022 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
9024 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
9025 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
9026 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
9027 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
9028 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each of the face
9029 attributes mentioned above.
9031 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
9032 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
9035 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
9036 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
9041 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
9042 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
9043 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
9044 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
9045 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
9046 results in a fully-specified face.
9048 *** Face realization.
9050 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
9051 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
9052 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
9053 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
9054 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
9055 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
9057 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
9058 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
9059 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
9060 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
9062 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
9063 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
9064 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
9065 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
9066 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
9068 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
9069 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
9070 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
9071 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
9072 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
9075 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
9076 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
9077 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
9078 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
9080 **** Clearing face caches.
9082 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
9083 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
9088 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
9089 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
9090 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
9092 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
9093 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
9094 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
9095 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
9096 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
9098 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
9099 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
9100 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
9102 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
9104 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
9105 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
9106 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
9107 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
9108 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
9109 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
9110 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
9112 Setting `face-font-family-alternatives' allows the user to specify
9113 alternative font families to try if a family specified by a face
9116 Setting `face-font-registry-alternatives' allows the user to specify
9117 all alternative font registry names to try for a face specifying a
9120 Please note that the interpretations of the above two variables are
9123 Setting face-ignored-fonts allows the user to ignore specific fonts.
9128 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
9129 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
9132 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
9133 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
9134 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
9135 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
9136 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
9139 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
9141 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
9143 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
9145 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
9147 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
9148 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
9149 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
9151 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
9152 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
9153 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
9154 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
9155 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
9156 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
9157 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
9158 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
9159 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
9160 of the face font sort order.
9162 - Function: x-font-family-list
9164 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
9165 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
9166 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
9167 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
9169 - Variable: font-list-limit
9171 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
9172 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
9173 matching font. The default is currently 100.
9175 *** Setting face attributes.
9177 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
9178 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
9179 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
9182 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
9183 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
9185 The following attributes are recognized:
9189 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
9190 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
9191 and `?' are allowed.
9195 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
9196 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
9197 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
9198 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
9202 VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use
9203 in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to
9204 scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old
9205 height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height.
9209 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
9210 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
9211 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
9215 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
9216 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
9219 `:foreground', `:background'
9221 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
9225 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
9226 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
9227 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
9232 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
9233 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
9234 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
9239 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
9240 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
9241 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
9242 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
9246 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
9247 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
9248 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
9249 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
9250 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
9251 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
9252 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
9253 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
9254 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
9255 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
9256 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
9257 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
9258 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
9259 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
9260 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
9261 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
9266 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
9267 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
9271 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
9272 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
9273 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
9274 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
9275 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
9276 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
9278 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
9279 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
9283 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
9284 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
9285 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
9288 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
9289 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
9290 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
9292 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
9297 VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list
9298 of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face
9299 like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces.
9301 *** Face attributes and X resources
9303 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
9306 Face attribute X resource class
9307 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
9308 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
9309 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
9310 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
9311 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
9312 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
9313 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
9314 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
9315 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
9316 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
9317 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
9318 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
9319 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
9320 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
9321 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
9322 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
9323 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
9324 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
9325 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
9326 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
9328 *** Text property `face'.
9330 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
9331 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
9332 specification can be
9334 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
9336 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
9337 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
9338 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
9339 for face attribute names.
9341 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
9342 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
9343 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
9345 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
9347 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
9348 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
9349 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
9350 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
9351 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
9352 used to clear the mapping table.
9354 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
9356 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
9357 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
9358 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
9359 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
9360 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
9361 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
9362 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
9363 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
9364 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
9365 modify their color-related behavior.
9367 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
9370 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
9372 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
9373 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
9374 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
9375 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
9376 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
9377 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
9378 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
9379 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
9380 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
9382 The new function `display-images-p' returns non-nil if a particular
9383 display can display image files.
9385 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
9387 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
9388 To disallow this completely (like previous versions of emacs), customize
9389 the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', and turn on the
9390 `Inviolable' option.
9392 The function `minibuffer-prompt-end' returns the current position of the
9393 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
9394 Otherwise, it returns `(point-min)'.
9396 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
9398 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
9399 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
9400 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
9402 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
9403 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
9404 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
9405 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
9406 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
9407 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
9408 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
9411 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
9412 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
9413 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
9415 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
9417 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
9419 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
9421 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
9422 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
9423 constrained position if that is different.
9425 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
9426 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
9427 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
9428 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
9429 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
9430 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
9431 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
9432 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
9433 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
9435 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
9436 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
9437 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
9438 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
9439 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
9441 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
9442 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
9444 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
9446 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
9448 Delete the field surrounding POS.
9449 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
9450 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
9452 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
9454 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
9455 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
9456 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
9457 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
9458 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
9460 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
9462 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
9463 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
9464 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
9465 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
9466 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
9468 - Function: field-string &optional POS
9470 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
9471 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
9472 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
9474 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
9476 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
9477 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
9478 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
9482 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
9483 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
9484 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
9485 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
9487 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
9488 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
9489 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
9490 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
9493 IMAGE is an image specification.
9495 *** Image specifications
9497 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
9498 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
9499 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
9500 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
9501 described below are ignored.
9503 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
9507 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
9508 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
9509 to use for its ascent.
9511 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
9512 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
9514 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
9515 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
9516 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
9517 overlays that apply to the image.
9521 MARGIN must be either a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put
9522 as margin around the image, or a pair (X . Y) with X specifying the
9523 horizontal margin and Y specifying the vertical margin. Default is 0.
9527 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
9532 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it.
9534 ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss''
9535 edge-detection algorithm to the image.
9537 ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means
9538 apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a
9539 nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at
9540 position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels
9541 around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the
9542 neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the
9543 transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at
9544 x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown
9547 (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1
9549 x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1)
9551 The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color
9552 resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels,
9553 multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum
9554 of the factors' absolute values.
9556 Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of
9562 Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of
9568 ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks
9573 If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for
9574 the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the
9575 image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the
9576 background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the
9577 image, assuming the most frequently occurring color from the corners is
9578 the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED
9579 GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the
9582 If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images
9583 in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying
9588 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
9589 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
9590 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
9591 may be present in the image specification.
9595 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
9596 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
9597 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
9598 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
9600 *** Supported image types
9602 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
9604 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
9605 properties supported are:
9609 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
9610 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground color.
9614 BG must be a string specifying the image background color, or nil
9615 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
9617 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
9618 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
9619 instead of a `:file' property.
9623 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
9627 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
9633 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
9634 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
9636 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
9638 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
9641 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
9642 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
9645 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
9647 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
9648 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
9649 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
9650 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
9652 Additional image properties supported are:
9654 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
9656 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
9657 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
9660 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
9661 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
9663 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
9664 to display compressed images.
9666 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
9668 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
9669 mono images are supported. Additional image properties supported for
9674 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
9675 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground color.
9679 BG must be a string specifying the image background color, or nil
9680 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
9682 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
9684 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
9685 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
9688 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
9690 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
9691 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
9694 **** GIF, image type `gif'
9696 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
9697 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
9699 Additional image properties supported are:
9703 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
9704 multi-image GIF file. If INDEX is too large, the image displays
9707 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
9708 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
9709 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
9712 (defun show-anim (file max)
9713 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
9714 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
9716 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
9719 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
9722 (goto-char (point-min))
9723 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
9724 (insert-image img "x"))
9725 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
9727 **** PNG, image type `png'
9729 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
9730 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
9733 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
9735 Additional image properties supported are:
9739 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
9740 integer. This is a required property.
9744 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
9745 must be a integer. This is an required property.
9749 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
9750 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
9751 files. This is an required property.
9753 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
9758 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
9759 which are supported in the current configuration.
9761 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
9762 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
9763 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
9764 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
9765 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
9767 *** Simplified image API, image.el
9769 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
9770 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
9771 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
9772 define an image based on available image types. The functions
9773 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
9778 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
9781 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
9782 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
9783 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
9784 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
9785 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
9786 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
9787 of the display margins.
9789 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
9790 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
9791 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
9792 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
9797 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
9798 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
9799 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
9800 that have a `help-echo' property.
9802 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
9803 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
9804 the window in which the help was found.
9806 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
9807 `help-echo' text property was found.
9809 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
9810 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
9812 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
9813 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
9816 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
9817 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
9819 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
9820 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
9821 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
9822 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
9823 used as help string.
9825 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
9826 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
9827 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
9829 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
9831 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
9832 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
9834 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
9835 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
9836 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
9837 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
9840 (global-set-key [A-down]
9843 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
9844 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
9845 (global-set-key [A-up]
9848 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
9849 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
9851 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
9853 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
9854 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
9855 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
9856 is called with one argument, POS.
9858 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
9859 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
9860 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
9861 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
9862 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
9864 ** Tool bar support.
9866 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
9867 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
9868 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
9869 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
9870 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
9871 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
9873 *** Tool bar item definitions
9875 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
9876 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
9877 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
9879 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
9880 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
9881 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
9882 property (see below).
9884 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
9885 binding are currently ignored.
9887 The following properties are recognized:
9891 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
9896 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
9900 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
9901 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
9902 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
9904 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
9906 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
9907 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
9911 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
9912 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
9913 meaning of each of the four elements:
9915 Index Use when item is
9916 ----------------------------------------
9917 0 enabled and selected
9918 1 enabled and deselected
9919 2 disabled and selected
9920 3 disabled and deselected
9922 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
9923 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
9925 `:help HELP-STRING'.
9927 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
9928 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
9930 The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding
9931 toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used
9932 to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the
9935 The default bindings use a menu-item :filter to derive the tool-bar
9936 dynamically from variable `tool-bar-map' which may be set
9937 buffer-locally to override the global map.
9939 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
9941 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
9942 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
9943 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
9945 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
9946 raised when the mouse moves over them.
9948 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
9949 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
9950 pixels, or a pair of integers (X . Y) specifying horizontal and
9951 vertical margins . Default is 1.
9953 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
9954 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
9956 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
9958 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
9961 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
9962 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
9963 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
9965 is the original tool bar item definition, then
9967 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
9969 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
9972 ** Mode line changes.
9974 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
9976 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
9977 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
9978 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
9980 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
9981 a `local-map' text property.
9983 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
9984 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
9986 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
9987 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
9988 `local-map' property.
9990 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
9991 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
9994 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
9995 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
9997 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
9998 variable mode-line-format to nil.
10000 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
10002 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
10003 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
10004 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
10005 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
10008 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
10011 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
10012 position in the header-line.
10014 ** Text property `display'
10016 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text,
10017 replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is
10018 also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of
10019 the `display' property should be a display specification, as described
10020 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
10022 *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas
10024 To replace the text having the `display' property with some other
10025 text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'.
10027 If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left
10028 marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in
10029 the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING
10030 is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
10031 simpler form STRING as property value.
10033 *** Variable width and height spaces
10035 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
10036 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
10037 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
10038 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
10039 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
10040 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
10041 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
10043 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
10044 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
10045 properties described below.
10047 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
10048 characters having the `display' property.
10052 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
10053 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
10055 - :relative-width FACTOR
10057 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
10058 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
10059 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
10060 width of that character by FACTOR.
10064 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
10065 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
10067 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
10071 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
10072 normal line height.
10074 - :relative-height FACTOR
10076 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
10077 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
10081 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
10082 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
10083 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
10086 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
10090 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
10091 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
10092 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
10093 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
10094 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
10095 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
10096 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
10097 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
10098 as display specification.
10100 *** Other display properties
10102 - (space-width FACTOR)
10104 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
10105 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
10110 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
10112 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
10113 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
10114 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
10115 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
10116 a font is available counts as a step.
10118 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
10119 as tall as the frame's default font.
10121 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
10122 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
10124 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
10125 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
10129 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
10130 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
10131 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
10132 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
10133 `height' subproperty.
10135 *** Conditional display properties
10137 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
10138 has the form `(when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC applies
10139 only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated. During the
10140 evaluation, `object' is bound to the string or buffer having the
10141 conditional display property; `position' and `buffer-position' are
10142 bound to the position within `object' and the buffer position where
10143 the display property was found, respectively. Both positions can be
10144 different when object is a string.
10146 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
10149 ** New menu separator types.
10151 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
10152 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
10153 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
10154 to specify other menu separator types.
10156 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
10158 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
10161 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
10163 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
10165 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
10167 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
10169 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
10171 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
10173 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
10175 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
10177 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
10179 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the form
10180 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
10182 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
10184 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
10186 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
10188 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
10190 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
10192 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
10194 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
10196 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
10198 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
10200 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
10202 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
10204 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
10206 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
10208 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
10210 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
10211 the corresponding single-line separators.
10213 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
10215 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
10216 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
10217 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
10218 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
10219 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
10220 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
10221 default foreground is black.
10223 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
10224 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
10225 `ScrollBarBackground').
10227 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
10228 settings for scroll bar colors.
10230 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
10231 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
10233 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
10234 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
10235 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
10236 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
10237 the original window start.
10239 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
10240 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
10241 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
10243 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
10245 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
10246 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
10247 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
10248 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
10250 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
10251 fixed-width and fixed-height.
10253 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
10255 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
10256 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
10257 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
10258 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
10259 temporarily to nil, for example
10261 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
10262 (enlarge-window 10))
10264 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
10265 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
10267 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
10268 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
10269 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
10270 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
10271 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
10272 support a vertical-bar cursor).
10276 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
10278 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
10281 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
10283 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
10285 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
10286 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
10287 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
10288 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
10289 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
10291 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
10295 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
10297 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
10301 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
10303 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
10304 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
10306 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
10308 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
10310 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
10311 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
10312 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
10314 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
10315 is the one that is used.
10317 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
10318 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
10319 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
10320 separate from the command's regular output.
10321 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
10322 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
10323 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
10326 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
10327 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
10328 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
10329 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
10331 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
10332 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
10333 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
10334 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
10336 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
10337 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
10338 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
10339 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
10341 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
10342 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
10343 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
10344 they never ignore case.
10346 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
10347 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
10348 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
10349 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
10350 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
10351 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
10352 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
10354 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
10355 the same format that was used in the file before.
10357 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
10358 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
10360 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
10361 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
10362 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
10364 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
10365 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
10366 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
10367 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
10368 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
10369 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
10370 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
10372 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
10373 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
10374 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
10375 format. You can now customize these variables.
10377 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
10378 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
10379 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
10380 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
10382 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
10383 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
10384 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
10386 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
10387 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
10388 doesn't have any effect.
10390 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
10391 not one per buffer.
10393 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
10394 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
10395 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
10397 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
10398 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
10399 `auto-show-mode' command.
10401 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
10402 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
10403 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
10404 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
10405 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
10407 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
10408 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
10410 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
10411 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
10412 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
10414 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
10415 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
10416 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
10417 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
10419 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
10421 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
10422 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
10423 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
10424 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
10425 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
10427 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
10428 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
10430 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
10431 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
10432 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
10433 `?' on other systems.
10435 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
10436 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
10439 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
10440 current codepage when it starts.
10444 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
10445 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
10446 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
10447 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
10448 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
10449 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
10453 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
10454 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
10456 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
10457 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
10458 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
10459 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
10460 buffer-file-coding-system.
10462 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
10463 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
10466 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
10467 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
10468 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
10469 list of possible coding systems.
10473 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
10474 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
10475 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
10476 docstring for details.
10478 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
10479 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
10480 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
10481 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
10482 lineup functions use this feature currently.
10484 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
10485 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
10487 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
10488 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
10490 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
10491 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
10492 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
10493 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
10496 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
10497 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
10499 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
10500 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
10501 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
10502 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
10504 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
10505 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
10506 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
10507 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
10508 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
10510 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
10512 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
10514 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
10515 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
10517 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
10519 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
10520 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
10521 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
10522 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
10523 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
10527 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
10528 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
10529 Gnus manual for the full story.
10531 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
10532 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
10533 group, which is created automatically.
10535 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
10538 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
10540 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
10541 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
10543 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
10546 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
10548 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
10549 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
10551 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
10553 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
10554 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
10556 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
10557 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
10559 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
10560 control over simplification.
10562 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
10564 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
10567 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
10569 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
10571 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
10572 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
10573 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
10575 *** Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
10576 `a' forces normal posting method.
10578 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
10581 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
10582 to a non-nil value.
10584 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
10585 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
10587 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
10590 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
10592 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
10594 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
10595 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
10597 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
10598 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
10600 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
10602 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
10605 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
10606 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
10608 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
10609 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
10611 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
10613 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
10615 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
10617 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
10619 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
10620 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
10621 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
10623 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
10624 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
10625 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
10626 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
10627 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
10629 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
10630 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
10631 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
10632 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
10634 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
10635 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
10636 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
10639 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
10641 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
10642 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
10644 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
10645 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
10646 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
10647 removed from the label.
10649 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
10650 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
10652 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
10653 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
10655 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
10656 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
10659 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
10661 ** New/deleted modes and packages
10663 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
10664 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
10666 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
10667 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
10668 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
10670 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
10671 changes with a special face.
10673 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
10674 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
10675 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
10677 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
10679 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
10680 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
10681 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
10682 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
10683 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
10685 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
10686 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
10687 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
10689 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
10690 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
10691 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
10692 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
10693 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
10694 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
10695 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
10696 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
10697 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
10699 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
10700 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
10701 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
10702 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
10703 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
10706 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
10707 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
10708 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
10709 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
10710 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
10711 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
10713 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
10714 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
10715 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
10716 was not documented clearly before.
10718 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
10719 This includes Tetris and Snake.
10721 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
10723 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
10724 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
10725 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
10726 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
10728 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
10729 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
10730 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
10732 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
10734 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
10735 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
10737 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
10738 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
10741 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
10742 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
10743 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
10744 file names and attributes are returned.
10746 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
10747 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
10748 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its attributes.
10749 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
10750 returns the result.
10752 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
10753 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
10755 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
10757 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
10758 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
10759 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
10762 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
10763 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
10766 The new function process-running-child-p
10767 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
10768 terminal to its own child process.
10770 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
10771 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
10772 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
10773 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
10775 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
10776 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
10778 ** easymenu.el now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
10779 :included is an alias for :visible.
10781 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
10782 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
10783 to move or copy menu entries.
10785 ** Multibyte editing changes
10787 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
10788 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
10789 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
10790 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
10791 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
10792 (setq char (sref str idx)
10793 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
10794 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
10796 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
10797 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
10798 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
10800 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
10801 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
10802 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
10804 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibited
10806 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
10807 across the boundary.
10809 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
10810 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
10811 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
10812 contains 8-bit characters.
10813 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
10814 contains invalid characters.
10816 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
10817 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
10818 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
10819 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
10822 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
10823 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
10824 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
10825 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
10827 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
10828 compose Thai characters in a string.
10830 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
10831 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
10832 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
10833 menus should always use the third argument.
10835 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
10836 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
10837 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
10838 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
10840 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
10841 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
10842 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
10843 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
10845 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
10846 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
10847 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
10848 echo area contents.
10850 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
10852 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
10853 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
10854 requested feature cannot be loaded.
10856 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
10857 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
10858 means to clear out that attribute.
10860 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
10861 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
10863 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
10864 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
10865 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
10866 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
10868 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
10869 the gap of the current buffer.
10871 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
10872 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
10875 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
10876 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
10877 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
10878 it back in after any modifications have been made.
10880 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
10882 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
10883 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
10884 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
10885 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
10886 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
10888 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
10889 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
10890 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
10891 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
10892 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
10894 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
10895 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
10896 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
10898 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
10899 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
10900 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
10901 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
10902 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
10905 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
10906 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
10907 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
10908 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
10910 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
10912 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
10913 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
10914 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
10915 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
10917 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
10918 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
10919 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
10920 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
10921 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
10922 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
10923 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
10926 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
10929 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
10930 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
10931 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
10932 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
10933 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
10935 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
10936 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
10937 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
10938 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
10940 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
10941 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
10942 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
10943 something that most users not do.
10945 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
10946 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
10947 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
10950 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
10951 pasting operations.
10953 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
10954 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
10955 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
10956 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
10959 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
10960 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
10961 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
10962 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
10963 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
10966 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
10967 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
10968 to be confused by TeX commands.
10970 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
10971 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
10972 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
10973 of various alternative replacements and actions.
10975 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
10976 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
10977 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
10978 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
10979 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
10981 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
10982 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
10984 ** Changes in input method usage.
10986 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
10987 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
10990 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
10992 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
10993 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
10995 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
10996 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
10998 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
11000 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
11002 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
11003 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
11005 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
11006 given in the following case:
11007 o When you are using a complex input method.
11008 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
11010 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
11011 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
11012 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
11013 setting it to t is helpful.
11015 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
11017 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
11019 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
11020 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
11021 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
11022 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
11025 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
11026 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
11027 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
11030 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
11032 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
11034 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
11035 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
11037 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
11038 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
11039 its owner and group.
11041 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
11042 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
11044 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
11045 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
11047 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
11048 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
11049 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
11050 by the left edge of the rectangle.
11052 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
11053 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
11054 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
11055 for writing keyboard macros.
11057 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
11058 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
11059 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
11060 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
11061 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
11064 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
11066 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
11067 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
11070 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
11071 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
11072 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
11073 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
11075 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
11076 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
11077 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
11079 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
11080 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
11081 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
11082 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
11084 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
11085 failure if the command produces no output.
11087 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
11088 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
11091 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
11092 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
11093 function and variable names.
11095 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
11096 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
11097 file-coding-system-alist.
11099 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
11100 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
11101 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
11102 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
11103 according to the current fontset.
11105 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
11107 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
11108 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
11109 nonascii-insert-offset.
11111 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
11112 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
11113 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
11114 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
11116 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
11117 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
11119 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
11120 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
11122 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
11123 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
11126 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
11127 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
11129 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
11130 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
11131 all variables that have documentation.
11133 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
11134 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
11135 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
11136 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
11137 it should show; the default is 20.
11139 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
11140 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
11143 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
11144 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
11145 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
11146 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
11147 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
11148 Newly added options are included as well.
11150 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
11151 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
11152 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
11154 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
11157 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
11158 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
11160 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
11161 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
11164 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
11165 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
11168 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
11169 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
11170 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
11171 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
11174 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
11176 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
11177 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
11178 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
11180 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
11181 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
11182 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
11187 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
11188 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
11190 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
11191 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
11193 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
11194 read and post multi-lingual articles.
11196 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
11197 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
11198 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
11199 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
11200 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
11201 made invisible again.
11203 ** Mail reading and sending changes
11205 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
11206 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
11207 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
11210 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
11211 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
11212 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
11213 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
11214 rmail-default-body-file.
11216 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
11217 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
11218 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
11220 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
11221 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
11222 is evaluated to insert the signature.
11224 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
11225 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
11226 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
11227 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
11228 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
11229 especially interested in trying feedmail.
11231 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
11232 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
11233 provided by feedmail are:
11235 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
11236 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
11237 there is also a queue for draft messages
11239 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
11240 be prompted for confirmation
11242 **** does smart filling of address headers
11244 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
11245 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
11246 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
11248 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
11249 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
11250 /usr/lib/sendmail, and Emacs Lisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
11251 function for something else (10-20 lines of Lisp code).
11255 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
11256 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
11258 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
11259 run Dired on the directory name at point.
11261 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
11262 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
11263 for a specified regexp.
11267 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
11270 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
11271 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
11274 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
11275 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
11276 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
11277 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
11279 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
11280 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
11281 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
11282 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
11283 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
11285 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
11286 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
11287 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
11288 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
11289 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
11291 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
11292 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
11293 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
11294 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
11296 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
11297 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
11298 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
11300 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
11301 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
11302 session to resolve them.
11304 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
11305 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
11306 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
11309 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
11310 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
11311 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
11312 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
11313 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
11314 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
11317 ** Changes in Font Lock
11319 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
11320 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
11321 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
11322 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
11323 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
11325 ** Frame name display changes
11327 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
11328 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
11329 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
11330 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
11332 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
11333 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
11336 ** Comint (subshell) changes
11338 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
11339 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
11340 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
11342 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
11344 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
11345 that is, the line after the last line you got.
11346 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
11348 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
11349 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
11350 the following line.
11352 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
11353 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
11354 previously sent input.
11356 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
11357 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
11358 as the search string.
11360 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
11361 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
11365 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
11366 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
11367 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
11370 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
11371 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
11372 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
11373 style is still the default however.
11375 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
11377 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
11378 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
11379 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
11381 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
11382 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
11384 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
11385 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
11387 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
11388 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
11390 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
11391 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
11393 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
11394 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
11395 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
11396 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
11398 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
11400 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
11401 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
11402 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
11404 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
11405 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
11406 expanding dynamically.
11408 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
11409 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
11411 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
11412 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
11413 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
11414 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
11416 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
11418 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
11420 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
11421 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
11422 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
11423 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
11424 against the first word in the title.
11426 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
11427 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
11428 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
11429 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
11430 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
11431 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
11433 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
11434 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
11435 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
11436 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
11438 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
11440 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
11441 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
11442 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
11443 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
11444 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
11445 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
11447 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
11448 Editing group once the package is loaded.
11450 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
11451 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
11452 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behavior.
11454 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
11455 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
11459 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
11460 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
11461 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
11463 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
11464 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
11465 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
11466 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
11469 o URLs are automatically skipped
11470 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
11472 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
11474 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
11476 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
11477 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
11478 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
11479 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
11481 *** New recursive parser.
11483 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
11484 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
11485 recursive parser scans the individual files.
11487 *** Parsing only part of a document.
11489 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
11490 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
11491 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
11493 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
11495 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
11497 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
11499 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
11501 *** Using multiple selection buffers
11503 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
11504 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
11506 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
11508 *** References to external documents.
11510 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
11511 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
11512 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
11513 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
11514 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
11515 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
11516 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
11518 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
11520 The built-in command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
11521 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
11523 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
11524 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
11526 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
11528 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
11529 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
11531 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
11533 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
11534 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
11535 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
11536 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
11537 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
11538 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
11541 *** Support for the varioref package
11543 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
11547 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
11548 and citations are created. These hooks are
11549 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
11550 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
11552 *** Citations outside LaTeX
11554 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
11555 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
11557 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
11559 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
11560 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
11563 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
11565 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
11566 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
11567 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
11568 directories that contain the same file name.
11570 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
11571 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
11572 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
11573 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
11574 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
11575 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
11576 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
11579 ** New modes and packages
11581 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
11582 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
11583 it, but some do not.
11585 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
11588 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
11589 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
11590 around in a buffer.
11592 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
11594 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
11595 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
11596 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
11597 established system of notation similar to Chess.
11599 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
11600 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
11601 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
11603 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
11604 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
11605 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
11606 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
11607 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
11610 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
11611 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
11613 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
11614 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
11615 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
11616 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
11618 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
11620 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
11621 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
11622 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
11623 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
11624 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
11625 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
11626 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
11627 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
11628 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
11629 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
11630 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
11632 Platform-specific modes:
11634 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
11635 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
11636 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
11637 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
11638 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
11639 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
11640 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
11641 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
11642 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
11644 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
11646 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
11647 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
11648 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
11649 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
11651 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
11652 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
11653 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
11655 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
11656 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
11657 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
11658 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
11660 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
11661 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
11662 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
11665 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
11666 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
11667 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
11668 current input method for reading this one event.
11670 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
11671 now control whether to output certain characters as
11672 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
11673 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
11674 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
11675 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
11677 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
11679 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
11680 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
11682 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
11683 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
11684 always increases point by 1.
11686 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
11687 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
11689 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
11691 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
11692 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
11693 default value changed. For example,
11695 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
11700 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
11703 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
11704 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
11705 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
11706 `:version' in the top level group.
11708 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
11710 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
11711 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
11713 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
11714 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
11715 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
11718 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
11719 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
11722 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
11723 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
11724 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
11726 ** Frame-local variables.
11728 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
11729 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
11730 local bindings for that variable.
11732 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
11733 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
11734 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
11737 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
11738 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
11739 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
11740 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
11742 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
11743 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
11744 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
11745 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
11747 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
11748 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
11749 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
11750 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
11751 See the documentation in sregex.el.
11753 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
11754 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
11755 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
11756 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
11758 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
11759 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
11761 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
11762 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
11763 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
11765 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
11766 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
11767 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
11768 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
11770 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
11771 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
11774 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
11775 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
11776 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
11777 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
11778 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
11780 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
11781 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
11782 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
11783 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
11785 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
11786 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
11787 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
11788 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
11789 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
11791 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
11792 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
11793 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
11794 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
11796 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
11797 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
11798 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
11800 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
11801 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
11802 was directed to display this buffer.
11804 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
11805 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
11806 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
11807 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
11808 set-window-configuration.
11810 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
11811 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
11812 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
11813 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
11815 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
11816 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
11817 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
11819 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
11820 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
11821 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
11823 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
11824 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
11826 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
11827 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
11829 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
11830 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
11831 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
11833 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
11834 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
11835 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
11836 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
11840 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
11841 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
11844 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
11845 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
11846 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
11847 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
11848 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
11850 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
11852 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
11853 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
11854 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
11855 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
11858 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
11859 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
11860 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
11861 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
11862 The supported properties include
11864 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
11866 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
11867 item should appear in the menu.
11869 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
11870 which will be REAL-BINDING.
11871 It should return a binding to use instead.
11873 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
11874 binding for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
11875 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
11876 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
11877 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
11880 This means that the command normally has no
11881 keyboard equivalent.
11882 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
11883 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
11884 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
11885 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
11886 value says whether this button is currently selected.
11888 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
11889 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
11891 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
11895 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
11896 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
11897 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
11898 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
11900 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
11902 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
11903 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
11904 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
11905 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
11906 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
11907 forward, away from the user.
11909 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
11911 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
11912 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
11913 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
11914 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
11915 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
11917 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
11919 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
11920 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
11921 that were dragged and dropped.
11923 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
11925 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
11927 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
11928 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
11929 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
11931 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
11932 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
11933 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
11935 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
11936 in Emacs 19 and before.
11938 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
11939 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
11941 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
11942 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
11943 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
11944 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
11946 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
11947 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
11948 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
11949 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
11950 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
11952 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
11953 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
11954 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
11955 consistent with the new representation.
11957 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
11958 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
11959 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
11960 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
11962 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
11963 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
11964 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
11966 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
11967 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
11968 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
11970 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
11971 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
11972 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
11974 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
11975 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
11977 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
11978 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
11980 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
11981 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
11982 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
11983 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
11985 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
11986 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
11988 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
11989 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
11990 buffer or string being searched.
11992 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
11993 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
11994 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
11995 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
11996 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
11997 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
11998 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
12000 *** Structure of coding system changed.
12002 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
12003 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
12004 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
12005 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
12006 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
12007 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
12008 define-coding-system-alias.
12010 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
12011 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
12012 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
12013 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
12014 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
12015 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
12016 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
12019 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
12020 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
12021 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
12022 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
12024 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
12025 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
12026 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
12027 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
12029 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
12030 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
12031 This function requires a user interaction.
12033 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
12034 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
12035 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
12036 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
12037 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
12038 select-safe-coding-system.
12040 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
12041 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
12042 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
12045 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
12046 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
12047 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
12049 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
12050 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
12051 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
12052 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
12054 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
12055 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
12056 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
12059 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
12060 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
12062 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
12063 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
12064 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
12065 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
12066 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
12067 range of characters.
12069 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
12070 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
12072 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
12073 in the current buffer at position POS.
12075 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
12076 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
12077 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
12078 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
12079 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
12080 binding input-method-function to nil.
12082 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
12083 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
12084 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
12085 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
12086 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
12088 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
12089 subsequent events of a key sequence.
12091 *** You can customize any language environment by using
12092 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
12094 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
12095 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
12096 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
12097 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
12098 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
12100 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
12102 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
12103 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
12104 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
12107 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
12108 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
12110 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
12111 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
12112 in your .emacs file.)
12114 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
12115 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
12117 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
12118 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
12120 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
12121 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
12124 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
12125 delete the character before point, as usual.
12127 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
12128 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
12129 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
12131 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
12132 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
12133 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
12134 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
12135 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
12138 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
12139 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
12140 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
12141 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
12142 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
12144 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
12145 and is an alias for it.
12147 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
12148 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
12150 ** Scrolling changes
12152 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
12153 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
12155 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
12156 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
12159 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
12160 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
12161 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
12162 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
12164 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
12165 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
12166 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
12167 recenters the window.
12169 ** International character set support (MULE)
12171 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
12172 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
12173 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
12174 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
12175 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
12176 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
12178 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
12179 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
12180 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
12181 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
12182 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
12184 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
12185 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
12186 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
12187 language, to make it possible to type them.
12189 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
12190 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
12192 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
12193 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
12195 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
12197 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
12199 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
12200 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
12201 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
12202 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
12203 characters for their work until they want to change.
12207 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
12208 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
12209 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
12210 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
12211 support several input methods.
12213 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
12214 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
12217 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
12218 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
12219 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
12220 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
12221 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
12224 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
12225 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
12226 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
12227 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
12228 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
12230 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
12231 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
12232 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
12233 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
12235 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
12236 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
12237 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
12238 the first guess is wrong.
12240 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
12241 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
12243 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
12244 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
12245 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
12246 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
12248 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
12249 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
12250 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
12251 translate automatically to and from either one.
12253 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
12255 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
12256 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
12257 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
12260 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
12261 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
12262 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
12263 multibyte characters in that buffer.
12265 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
12266 character conversion as well.
12268 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
12270 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
12271 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
12272 requires using many fonts.
12274 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
12275 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
12277 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
12278 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
12279 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
12280 you would use a font.
12282 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
12283 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
12284 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
12286 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
12287 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
12290 *** Defining fontsets.
12292 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
12293 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
12294 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
12296 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
12297 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
12298 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
12299 standard fontset are created automatically.
12301 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
12302 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
12303 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
12304 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
12305 name is `fontset-startup'.
12307 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
12308 The resource value should have this form:
12309 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
12310 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
12311 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
12312 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
12313 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
12314 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
12315 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
12316 CHARSET-NAME should be the name of a character set, and FONT-NAME
12317 should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
12319 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
12320 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
12321 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
12323 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
12324 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
12325 following resource,
12326 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
12327 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
12328 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
12329 Here is the substitution rule:
12330 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
12331 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
12332 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
12333 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
12334 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
12336 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
12337 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
12338 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
12340 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
12341 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
12342 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
12343 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
12346 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
12347 defaults for a particular choice of language.
12349 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
12350 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
12351 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
12352 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
12353 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
12354 system for new files that you create.
12356 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
12357 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
12358 whole Emacs session.
12360 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
12361 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
12362 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
12364 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
12365 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
12366 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
12367 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
12368 coding systems that Emacs supports.
12370 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
12371 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
12372 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
12373 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
12374 is used for *the immediately following command*.
12376 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
12377 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
12379 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
12380 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
12382 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
12383 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
12385 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
12386 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
12387 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
12388 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
12391 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
12392 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
12393 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
12394 translated into that character code.
12396 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
12397 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
12399 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
12401 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
12402 the coding system for keyboard input.
12404 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
12405 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
12406 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
12408 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
12410 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
12411 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
12412 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
12413 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
12414 designed to work with terminals.
12416 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
12417 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
12418 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
12419 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
12420 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
12421 in the corresponding buffer.
12423 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
12425 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
12426 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
12427 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
12429 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
12430 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
12431 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
12434 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
12435 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
12437 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
12438 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
12439 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
12440 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
12442 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
12443 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
12444 related information.
12446 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
12447 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
12450 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
12451 information about the support for a particular language.
12452 You specify the language as an argument.
12454 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
12455 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
12458 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
12459 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
12460 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
12461 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
12463 A alternativnyj (Russian)
12465 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
12466 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
12467 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
12468 E euc-japan (Japanese)
12469 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
12470 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
12471 K euc-korea (Korean)
12474 S shift_jis (Japanese)
12477 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
12478 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
12479 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
12480 v viqr (Vietnamese)
12483 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
12484 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
12485 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
12486 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
12488 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
12489 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
12491 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
12492 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
12493 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
12494 Rmail files themselves.
12496 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
12497 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
12499 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
12502 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
12503 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
12504 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
12505 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
12506 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
12508 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
12509 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
12510 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
12513 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
12514 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
12515 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
12516 without any conversion.
12518 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
12519 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
12520 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
12521 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
12523 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
12524 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
12526 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
12527 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
12529 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
12530 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
12532 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
12533 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
12534 in the buffer before point.
12536 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
12537 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
12540 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
12541 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
12543 ** File locking works with NFS now.
12545 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
12546 in the same directory as FILENAME.
12548 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
12549 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
12550 can become a bottleneck.
12552 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
12553 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
12554 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
12555 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
12556 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
12557 so useful that the change is worth while.
12559 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
12560 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
12561 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
12562 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
12564 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
12565 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
12568 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
12569 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
12570 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
12572 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
12573 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
12574 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
12576 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
12577 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
12578 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
12580 ** Changes in View mode.
12582 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
12583 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
12585 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
12586 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
12588 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
12591 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
12592 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
12594 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
12595 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
12596 not just the selected window.
12598 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
12599 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
12600 turns View mode on or off.
12602 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
12603 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
12604 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
12606 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
12607 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
12609 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
12610 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
12611 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
12612 which version to compare with.
12614 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
12615 blocks if a match is inside the block.
12617 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
12618 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
12619 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
12620 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
12622 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
12623 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
12624 blocks, all of them or none.
12626 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
12627 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
12628 confirmation first.
12630 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
12631 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
12632 However, the mode will not be changed if
12633 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
12634 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
12635 not suitable for ordinary files, or
12636 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
12638 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
12640 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
12641 these commands do not change the major mode.
12643 ** M-x occur changes.
12645 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
12646 it performs a case-sensitive search.
12648 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
12649 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
12650 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
12652 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
12653 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
12654 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
12655 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
12656 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
12658 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
12659 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
12660 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
12661 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
12663 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
12664 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
12665 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
12667 ** Outline mode changes.
12669 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
12671 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
12673 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
12674 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
12675 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
12676 was already active.
12678 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
12679 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
12680 get confused by it.
12682 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
12683 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
12685 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
12687 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
12688 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
12689 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
12690 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
12692 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
12693 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
12694 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
12696 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
12697 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
12700 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
12701 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
12702 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
12703 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
12705 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
12706 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
12707 can be. The default value is 30.
12709 ** Changes in Mail mode.
12711 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
12712 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
12713 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
12714 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
12715 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
12718 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
12719 compose-mail-other-frame.
12721 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
12722 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
12723 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
12724 buffer that shows the original message.
12726 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
12727 with separator lines around the contents.
12729 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
12730 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
12731 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
12732 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
12734 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
12736 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
12737 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
12738 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
12739 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
12741 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
12742 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
12745 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
12746 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
12749 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
12750 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
12751 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
12752 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
12754 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
12755 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
12756 be taken to be magic.
12758 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
12759 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
12760 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
12762 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
12763 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
12765 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
12766 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
12768 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
12770 new key dired.el binding old key
12771 ------- ---------------- -------
12772 * c dired-change-marks c
12774 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
12775 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
12776 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
12778 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
12779 * ? dired-unmark-all-files C-M-?
12780 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
12781 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
12782 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
12783 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
12787 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
12788 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
12789 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
12790 each time you run it.
12792 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
12793 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
12795 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
12796 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
12797 means to move in the opposite direction.
12799 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
12800 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
12802 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
12803 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
12804 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
12805 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
12810 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
12812 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
12815 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
12816 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
12818 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
12821 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
12823 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
12825 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
12827 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
12828 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
12829 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
12831 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
12833 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
12835 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
12836 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
12838 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
12839 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
12840 used to pick articles.
12842 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
12843 another have been added.
12845 `M-x gnus-change-server'
12847 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
12848 generating lines in buffers.
12850 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
12853 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
12855 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
12857 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
12859 *** Scores can be decayed.
12861 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
12863 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
12864 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
12866 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
12869 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
12871 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
12872 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `C-M-d'.
12874 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
12876 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
12877 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
12879 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
12880 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
12882 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
12885 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
12886 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
12888 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
12890 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
12892 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
12894 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
12896 Use the `Y c' command.
12898 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
12900 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
12902 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
12904 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
12905 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
12907 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
12909 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
12911 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
12912 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
12914 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
12916 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
12917 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
12918 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
12919 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
12922 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
12923 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
12924 particular news group. This can be done by:
12926 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
12928 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
12929 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
12930 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
12931 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
12932 for reading and posting).
12934 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
12935 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
12936 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
12937 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
12940 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
12941 default. Here are some of these default settings:
12943 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
12944 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
12945 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
12946 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
12947 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
12949 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
12950 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
12952 ** CC mode changes.
12954 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
12955 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
12956 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
12957 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
12958 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
12961 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
12962 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
12963 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
12964 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
12965 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
12966 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
12968 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
12969 of the current buffer.
12971 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
12972 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
12973 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
12975 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
12976 style that the Python developers like.
12978 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
12979 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
12980 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
12982 ** VC Changes [new]
12984 *** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
12985 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
12986 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
12988 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
12989 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
12992 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
12993 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
12995 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
12996 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
12997 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
12998 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
13000 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
13001 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
13003 ** Calendar changes.
13005 *** A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or
13006 subclasses of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow
13007 you do this for the year of the selected date, or the
13008 following/previous years.
13010 *** There is now support for the Baha'i calendar system. Use `pb' in
13011 the *Calendar* buffer to display the current Baha'i date. The Baha'i
13012 calendar, or "Badi calendar" is a system of 19 months with 19 days
13013 each, and 4 intercalary days (5 during a Gregorian leap year). The
13014 calendar begins May 23, 1844, with each of the months named after a
13015 supposed attribute of God.
13017 ** ps-print changes
13019 There are some new user variables and subgroups for customizing the page
13022 *** Headers & Footers (subgroup)
13024 Some printer systems print a header page and force the first page to
13025 be printed on the back of the header page when using duplex. If your
13026 printer system has this behavior, set variable
13027 `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' to t.
13029 If variable `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' is non-nil, it prints a
13030 blank page as the very first printed page. So, it behaves as if the
13031 very first character of buffer (or region) were a form feed ^L (\014).
13033 The variable `ps-spool-config' specifies who is responsible for
13034 setting duplex mode and page size. Valid values are:
13036 lpr-switches duplex and page size are configured by `ps-lpr-switches'.
13037 Don't forget to set `ps-lpr-switches' to select duplex
13038 printing for your printer.
13040 setpagedevice duplex and page size are configured by ps-print using the
13041 setpagedevice PostScript operator.
13043 nil duplex and page size are configured by ps-print *not* using
13044 the setpagedevice PostScript operator.
13046 The variable `ps-spool-tumble' specifies how the page images on
13047 opposite sides of a sheet are oriented with respect to each other. If
13048 `ps-spool-tumble' is nil, ps-print produces output suitable for
13049 bindings on the left or right. If `ps-spool-tumble' is non-nil,
13050 ps-print produces output suitable for bindings at the top or bottom.
13051 This variable takes effect only if `ps-spool-duplex' is non-nil.
13052 The default value is nil.
13054 The variable `ps-header-frame-alist' specifies a header frame
13055 properties alist. Valid frame properties are:
13057 fore-color Specify the foreground frame color.
13058 Value should be a float number between 0.0 (black
13059 color) and 1.0 (white color), or a string which is a
13060 color name, or a list of 3 float numbers which
13061 correspond to the Red Green Blue color scale, each
13062 float number between 0.0 (dark color) and 1.0 (bright
13063 color). The default is 0 ("black").
13065 back-color Specify the background frame color (similar to fore-color).
13066 The default is 0.9 ("gray90").
13068 shadow-color Specify the shadow color (similar to fore-color).
13069 The default is 0 ("black").
13071 border-color Specify the border color (similar to fore-color).
13072 The default is 0 ("black").
13074 border-width Specify the border width.
13075 The default is 0.4.
13077 Any other property is ignored.
13079 Don't change this alist directly; instead use Custom, or the
13080 `ps-value', `ps-get', `ps-put' and `ps-del' functions (see there for
13083 Ps-print can also print footers. The footer variables are:
13084 `ps-print-footer', `ps-footer-offset', `ps-print-footer-frame',
13085 `ps-footer-font-family', `ps-footer-font-size', `ps-footer-line-pad',
13086 `ps-footer-lines', `ps-left-footer', `ps-right-footer' and
13087 `ps-footer-frame-alist'. These variables are similar to those
13088 controlling headers.
13090 *** Color management (subgroup)
13092 If `ps-print-color-p' is non-nil, the buffer's text will be printed in
13095 *** Face Management (subgroup)
13097 If you need to print without worrying about face background colors,
13098 set the variable `ps-use-face-background' which specifies if face
13099 background should be used. Valid values are:
13101 t always use face background color.
13102 nil never use face background color.
13103 (face...) list of faces whose background color will be used.
13105 *** N-up printing (subgroup)
13107 The variable `ps-n-up-printing' specifies the number of pages per
13110 The variable `ps-n-up-margin' specifies the margin in points (pt)
13111 between the sheet border and the n-up printing.
13113 If variable `ps-n-up-border-p' is non-nil, a border is drawn around
13116 The variable `ps-n-up-filling' specifies how the page matrix is filled
13117 on each sheet of paper. Following are the valid values for
13118 `ps-n-up-filling' with a filling example using a 3x4 page matrix:
13120 `left-top' 1 2 3 4 `left-bottom' 9 10 11 12
13124 `right-top' 4 3 2 1 `right-bottom' 12 11 10 9
13128 `top-left' 1 4 7 10 `bottom-left' 3 6 9 12
13132 `top-right' 10 7 4 1 `bottom-right' 12 9 6 3
13136 Any other value is treated as `left-top'.
13138 *** Zebra stripes (subgroup)
13140 The variable `ps-zebra-color' controls the zebra stripes grayscale or
13143 The variable `ps-zebra-stripe-follow' specifies how zebra stripes
13144 continue on next page. Visually, valid values are (the character `+'
13145 to the right of each column indicates that a line is printed):
13147 `nil' `follow' `full' `full-follow'
13148 Current Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
13149 1 XXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXX + 1 XXXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13150 2 XXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXX + 2 XXXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13151 3 XXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXX + 3 XXXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13155 7 XXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXX + 7 XXXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13156 8 XXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXX + 8 XXXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13157 9 XXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXX + 9 XXXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13160 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
13161 Next Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
13162 12 XXXXX + 12 + 10 XXXXXX + 10 +
13163 13 XXXXX + 13 XXXXXXXX + 11 XXXXXX + 11 +
13164 14 XXXXX + 14 XXXXXXXX + 12 XXXXXX + 12 +
13165 15 + 15 XXXXXXXX + 13 + 13 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13166 16 + 16 + 14 + 14 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13167 17 + 17 + 15 + 15 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
13168 18 XXXXX + 18 + 16 XXXXXX + 16 +
13169 19 XXXXX + 19 XXXXXXXX + 17 XXXXXX + 17 +
13170 20 XXXXX + 20 XXXXXXXX + 18 XXXXXX + 18 +
13173 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
13175 Any other value is treated as `nil'.
13178 *** Printer management (subgroup)
13180 The variable `ps-printer-name-option' determines the option used by
13181 some utilities to indicate the printer name; it's used only when
13182 `ps-printer-name' is a non-empty string. If you're using the lpr
13183 utility to print, for example, `ps-printer-name-option' should be set
13186 The variable `ps-manual-feed' indicates if the printer requires manual
13187 paper feeding. If it's nil, automatic feeding takes place. If it's
13188 non-nil, manual feeding takes place.
13190 The variable `ps-end-with-control-d' specifies whether C-d (\x04)
13191 should be inserted at end of the generated PostScript. Non-nil means
13194 *** Page settings (subgroup)
13196 If variable `ps-warn-paper-type' is nil, it's *not* treated as an
13197 error if the PostScript printer doesn't have a paper with the size
13198 indicated by `ps-paper-type'; the default paper size will be used
13199 instead. If `ps-warn-paper-type' is non-nil, an error is signaled if
13200 the PostScript printer doesn't support a paper with the size indicated
13201 by `ps-paper-type'. This is used when `ps-spool-config' is set to
13204 The variable `ps-print-upside-down' determines the orientation for
13205 printing pages: nil means `normal' printing, non-nil means
13206 `upside-down' printing (that is, the page is rotated by 180 degrees).
13208 The variable `ps-selected-pages' specifies which pages to print. If
13209 it's nil, all pages are printed. If it's a list, list elements may be
13210 integers specifying a single page to print, or cons cells (FROM . TO)
13211 specifying to print from page FROM to TO. Invalid list elements, that
13212 is integers smaller than one, or elements whose FROM is greater than
13213 its TO, are ignored.
13215 The variable `ps-even-or-odd-pages' specifies how to print even/odd
13216 pages. Valid values are:
13218 nil print all pages.
13220 `even-page' print only even pages.
13222 `odd-page' print only odd pages.
13224 `even-sheet' print only even sheets.
13225 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
13226 `even-page', but for values greater than 1, it'll
13227 print only the even sheet of paper.
13229 `odd-sheet' print only odd sheets.
13230 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
13231 `odd-page'; but for values greater than 1, it'll print
13232 only the odd sheet of paper.
13234 Any other value is treated as nil.
13236 If you set `ps-selected-pages' (see there for documentation), pages
13237 are filtered by `ps-selected-pages', and then by
13238 `ps-even-or-odd-pages'. For example, if we have:
13240 (setq ps-selected-pages '(1 4 (6 . 10) (12 . 16) 20))
13242 and we combine this with `ps-even-or-odd-pages' and
13243 `ps-n-up-printing', we get:
13245 `ps-n-up-printing' = 1:
13246 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
13247 nil 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20
13248 even-page 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
13249 odd-page 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
13250 even-sheet 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
13251 odd-sheet 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
13253 `ps-n-up-printing' = 2:
13254 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
13255 nil 1/4, 6/7, 8/9, 10/12, 13/14, 15/16, 20
13256 even-page 4/6, 8/10, 12/14, 16/20
13257 odd-page 1/7, 9/13, 15
13258 even-sheet 6/7, 10/12, 15/16
13259 odd-sheet 1/4, 8/9, 13/14, 20
13261 *** Miscellany (subgroup)
13263 The variable `ps-error-handler-message' specifies where error handler
13264 messages should be sent.
13266 It is also possible to add a user-defined PostScript prologue code in
13267 front of all generated prologue code by setting the variable
13268 `ps-user-defined-prologue'.
13270 The variable `ps-line-number-font' specifies the font for line numbers.
13272 The variable `ps-line-number-font-size' specifies the font size in
13273 points for line numbers.
13275 The variable `ps-line-number-color' specifies the color for line
13276 numbers. See `ps-zebra-color' for documentation.
13278 The variable `ps-line-number-step' specifies the interval in which
13279 line numbers are printed. For example, if `ps-line-number-step' is set
13280 to 2, the printing will look like:
13292 integer an integer specifying the interval in which line numbers are
13293 printed. If it's smaller than or equal to zero, 1
13296 `zebra' specifies that only the line number of the first line in a
13297 zebra stripe is to be printed.
13299 Any other value is treated as `zebra'.
13301 The variable `ps-line-number-start' specifies the starting point in
13302 the interval given by `ps-line-number-step'. For example, if
13303 `ps-line-number-step' is set to 3, and `ps-line-number-start' is set to
13304 3, the output will look like:
13318 The variable `ps-postscript-code-directory' specifies the directory
13319 where the PostScript prologue file used by ps-print is found.
13321 The variable `ps-line-spacing' determines the line spacing in points,
13322 for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
13325 The variable `ps-paragraph-spacing' determines the paragraph spacing,
13326 in points, for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
13329 The variable `ps-paragraph-regexp' specifies the paragraph delimiter.
13331 The variable `ps-begin-cut-regexp' and `ps-end-cut-regexp' specify the
13332 start and end of a region to cut out when printing.
13334 ** hideshow changes.
13336 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
13339 *** Support for java-mode added.
13341 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
13342 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
13344 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the comments at
13345 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
13346 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
13348 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
13349 robust and a lot faster.
13351 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
13353 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
13354 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
13355 documentation for more details.
13357 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
13359 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
13360 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
13361 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
13362 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
13363 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
13365 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
13366 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
13367 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
13368 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
13374 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
13375 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
13376 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
13377 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
13378 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
13379 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
13381 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
13383 *** Maximum decoration
13385 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
13386 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
13387 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
13388 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
13389 to get the old behavior.
13393 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
13395 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
13396 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
13398 *** Configurable support
13400 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
13401 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
13402 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
13403 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
13404 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
13405 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
13406 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
13408 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
13409 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
13410 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
13412 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
13414 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
13415 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
13418 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
13420 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
13426 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
13427 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
13428 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
13429 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
13431 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
13433 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
13434 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
13435 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
13437 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
13439 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
13440 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
13441 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
13442 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
13443 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
13444 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
13445 Lock mode behavior and the behavior of Font Lock mode.
13447 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
13448 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
13449 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
13450 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
13451 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
13452 the command M-o M-o (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
13454 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
13456 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
13457 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
13458 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
13459 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
13461 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
13464 ** Ada mode changes.
13466 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
13467 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
13468 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
13469 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
13472 *** There are two new commands:
13473 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
13474 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
13476 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
13477 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
13478 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
13480 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
13481 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
13482 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
13484 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
13485 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
13486 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
13487 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
13489 ** Scheme mode changes.
13491 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
13492 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
13493 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
13494 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
13497 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
13498 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
13499 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
13500 variables as buffer-local variables.
13502 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
13503 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
13505 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
13507 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
13508 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
13509 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
13510 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
13512 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
13513 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
13516 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
13517 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
13518 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
13519 option takes precedence.
13521 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
13522 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
13523 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
13525 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
13526 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
13529 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
13530 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
13532 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
13533 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
13536 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
13537 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
13538 these register values no longer become completely useless.
13539 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
13540 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
13541 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
13543 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
13544 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
13545 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
13546 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
13548 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
13549 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
13550 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
13551 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
13552 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
13554 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
13555 since it applies only to the current frame.
13557 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
13558 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
13559 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
13561 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
13562 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
13563 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
13564 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
13565 instead of just the file you are editing.
13569 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
13570 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
13571 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
13572 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
13573 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
13576 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
13577 knows which kind of label is needed.
13579 C-c ) reftex-reference
13580 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
13581 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
13583 C-c [ reftex-citation
13584 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
13585 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
13587 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
13588 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
13591 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
13592 can quickly jump to every section.
13594 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
13595 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
13596 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
13597 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
13598 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
13600 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
13602 *** Info documentation is now available.
13604 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
13605 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
13607 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
13608 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
13610 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
13611 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
13613 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
13614 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
13615 appropriate functions.
13617 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
13618 entries. They are bound by default to C-M-l and C-M-h.
13620 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
13623 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
13624 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
13626 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
13627 shall be delimited.
13629 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
13630 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
13631 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
13633 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
13634 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
13635 prefixed with `ALT'.
13637 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
13638 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
13639 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
13642 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
13643 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
13644 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
13646 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
13647 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
13649 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
13650 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
13651 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
13653 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
13655 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
13657 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
13658 from alien sources.
13660 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
13661 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
13664 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
13667 *** Added support for imenu.
13669 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
13670 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
13671 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
13672 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
13674 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
13675 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
13677 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
13679 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
13681 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
13682 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
13683 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
13686 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
13687 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
13689 ** browse-url changes
13691 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
13692 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
13693 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
13694 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
13695 customization variables.
13697 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
13699 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
13700 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
13701 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
13703 ** Changes in Ediff
13705 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
13706 pops up the Info file for this command.
13708 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
13709 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
13710 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
13713 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
13714 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
13715 files in the same directory.
13717 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
13718 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
13719 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
13721 ** Changes in Viper
13723 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
13724 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
13726 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
13727 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
13728 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
13729 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
13730 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
13731 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
13732 color when Viper is in insert state.
13733 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
13734 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
13735 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
13739 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
13740 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
13741 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
13742 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
13743 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
13745 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
13747 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
13748 constructs are tagged. Files are recognized by the extension .java.
13750 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
13751 recognized by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
13752 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
13754 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
13755 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
13756 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
13757 methods and protocols.
13759 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognized by the extension
13760 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
13761 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
13764 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
13765 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
13766 at least M times and as many as N times.
13768 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
13769 in files has changed slightly.
13771 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
13772 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
13773 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
13774 with old time-stamp-format values.
13776 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
13777 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
13778 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
13781 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
13782 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
13783 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
13784 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
13785 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
13786 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
13788 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
13789 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
13790 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
13792 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
13793 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
13794 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
13795 recommended now will continue to work then.
13797 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
13800 ** There are some additional major modes:
13802 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
13803 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
13804 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
13806 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
13807 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
13810 ** New Lisp packages include:
13812 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
13814 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
13815 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
13817 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
13819 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
13822 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
13823 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
13826 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
13827 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
13828 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
13829 strings or comments.
13831 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
13832 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
13833 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
13834 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
13837 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
13838 can visit them by short forms of their names.
13840 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
13841 Emacs Lisp function at point.
13843 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
13845 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
13846 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
13848 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
13850 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
13852 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
13854 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
13855 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
13857 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
13858 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
13859 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
13860 original place after inserting the copy.
13862 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
13865 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
13866 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
13867 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
13869 Enable mouse-drag with:
13870 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
13872 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
13874 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
13875 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
13877 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
13878 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
13882 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
13883 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
13884 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
13885 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
13886 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
13887 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
13888 instance) and vice versa.
13890 To use this package load it using
13891 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
13892 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
13893 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
13894 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
13895 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
13896 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
13898 *** Interface to ph.
13900 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
13902 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
13903 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
13906 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
13908 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
13909 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
13910 while the real cursor does not move.
13912 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
13913 for visiting your favorite web sites.
13915 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
13916 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
13920 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
13921 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
13922 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
13923 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
13925 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
13927 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
13929 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
13931 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
13932 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
13933 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
13934 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
13935 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
13937 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
13938 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
13939 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
13940 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
13941 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
13942 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
13944 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
13946 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
13947 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
13948 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
13949 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
13951 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
13952 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
13954 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
13955 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
13958 ** Basic Lisp changes
13960 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
13961 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
13963 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
13964 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
13967 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
13969 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
13971 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
13972 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
13974 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
13975 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
13978 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
13980 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
13982 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
13984 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
13985 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
13986 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
13989 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
13990 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
13991 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
13993 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
13994 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
13995 adding one of these suffixes.
13997 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
13998 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
13999 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
14001 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
14002 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
14004 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
14006 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
14007 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
14009 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
14010 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
14012 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
14014 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
14015 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
14017 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
14018 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
14019 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
14020 works using `save-current-buffer'.
14022 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
14023 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
14026 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
14027 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
14028 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
14031 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
14032 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
14035 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
14037 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
14038 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
14039 Then it returns that string.
14041 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
14043 (with-output-to-string
14044 (princ "The buffer is ")
14045 (princ (buffer-name)))
14047 returns "The buffer is foo".
14049 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
14052 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
14053 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
14054 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
14056 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
14057 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
14059 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
14060 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
14061 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
14062 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
14063 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
14064 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
14066 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
14067 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
14068 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
14071 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
14072 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
14073 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
14074 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
14075 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
14077 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
14078 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
14079 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
14080 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
14082 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
14083 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
14085 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
14087 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
14088 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
14089 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
14090 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
14093 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
14094 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
14097 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
14099 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
14100 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
14101 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
14102 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
14103 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
14105 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
14107 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
14108 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
14109 more than the number of characters.
14111 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
14112 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
14113 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
14114 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
14115 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
14116 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
14118 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
14119 and returns a string containing those characters.
14121 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
14122 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
14123 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
14124 character, sref signals an error.
14126 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
14127 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
14128 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
14130 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
14131 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
14132 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
14134 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
14135 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
14136 to a vector of the characters in it.
14138 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
14139 of a string. You call it as follows:
14141 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
14143 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
14144 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
14145 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
14146 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
14147 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
14149 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
14150 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
14152 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
14153 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
14155 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
14156 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
14157 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
14158 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
14160 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
14162 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
14164 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
14165 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
14166 are not included in the resulting value.
14168 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
14169 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
14170 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
14171 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
14173 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
14174 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
14175 character extends across that column), then the padding character
14176 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
14177 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
14178 column START-COLUMN.
14180 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
14181 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
14182 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
14183 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
14184 changed text, before the change.
14186 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
14187 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
14188 one character set for each script, not for each language.
14190 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
14192 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
14194 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
14195 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
14197 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
14198 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
14199 which identify the character within that character set.
14201 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
14202 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
14203 opposite of split-char.
14205 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
14206 of all the characters between BEG and END.
14208 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
14209 of all the characters in a string.
14211 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
14212 and specifying coding systems.
14214 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
14215 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
14216 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
14217 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
14218 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
14219 as what to do about code conversion.)
14221 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
14222 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
14224 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
14225 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
14226 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
14228 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
14229 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
14230 to match against a file name.
14232 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
14233 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
14234 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
14235 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
14236 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
14237 specifies the coding system for encoding.
14239 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
14240 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
14242 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
14243 the coding system to use for network sockets.
14245 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
14246 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
14247 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
14250 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
14251 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
14252 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
14253 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
14254 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
14255 specifies the coding system for encoding.
14257 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
14258 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
14260 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
14261 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
14262 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
14263 start the subprocess.
14265 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
14266 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
14267 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
14268 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
14269 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
14271 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
14272 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
14275 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
14276 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
14277 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
14278 connection permanently or until overridden.
14280 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
14281 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
14282 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
14283 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
14284 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
14285 system for one operation at a time.
14287 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
14288 files, subprocesses or network connections.
14290 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
14291 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
14292 The value is a cons cell,
14293 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
14294 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
14295 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
14296 input to the subprocess.
14298 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
14299 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
14301 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
14302 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
14303 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
14305 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
14306 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
14307 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
14308 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
14311 Thus, instead of writing
14313 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
14314 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
14316 you would now write this:
14318 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
14319 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
14323 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
14324 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
14325 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
14326 for a description of them.
14328 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
14329 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
14331 (defgroup ispell nil
14332 "Spell checking using Ispell."
14335 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
14336 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
14337 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
14338 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
14339 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
14341 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
14342 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
14343 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
14344 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
14345 first-level subgroups.
14347 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
14349 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
14350 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
14354 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
14355 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
14356 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
14357 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
14358 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
14359 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
14361 ** Text property changes
14363 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
14366 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
14367 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
14368 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
14369 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
14370 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
14372 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
14373 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
14374 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
14375 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
14377 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
14378 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
14379 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
14381 ** Changes in invisibility features
14383 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
14384 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
14385 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
14386 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
14387 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
14388 make the overlay visible.
14390 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
14391 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
14392 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
14393 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
14394 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
14395 t when it should hide it.
14397 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
14399 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
14400 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
14401 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
14402 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
14403 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
14404 Here is an example of how to do this:
14406 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
14407 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
14408 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
14409 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
14412 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
14415 ;; When done with the overlays:
14416 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
14417 ;; Or respectively:
14418 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
14420 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
14422 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
14423 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
14424 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
14425 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
14427 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
14428 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
14429 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
14431 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
14432 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
14434 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
14435 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
14437 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
14438 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
14439 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
14441 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
14442 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
14443 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
14444 determine the syntax type of the character.
14446 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
14447 of the current buffer.
14449 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
14450 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
14451 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
14453 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
14454 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
14455 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
14456 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
14457 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
14459 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
14462 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
14463 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
14464 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
14466 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
14467 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
14468 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
14469 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
14470 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
14472 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
14473 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
14474 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
14476 ** Changes in face features
14478 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
14479 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
14481 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
14482 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
14484 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
14485 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
14487 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
14488 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
14490 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
14491 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
14492 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
14493 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
14496 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
14497 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
14499 ** Changes in file-handling functions
14501 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
14502 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
14503 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
14504 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
14506 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
14509 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
14510 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
14512 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
14513 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
14515 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
14516 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
14518 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
14519 character code conversion as well as other things.
14521 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
14522 (formerly it did not).
14524 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
14525 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
14527 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
14528 instead of constant strings.
14530 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
14531 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
14532 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
14534 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
14535 in the same way as before.
14537 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
14538 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
14539 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
14541 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
14542 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
14543 else, and returns nil.
14545 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
14546 directory cannot be listed.
14548 ** Changes in minibuffer input
14550 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
14551 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
14552 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
14553 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
14556 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
14557 It is available through the history command M-n.
14559 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
14560 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
14561 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
14562 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
14563 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
14565 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
14566 argument in this way.
14568 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
14569 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
14570 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
14572 ** Echo area features
14574 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
14575 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
14576 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
14577 after the echo area is cleared.
14579 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
14580 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
14582 ** Keyboard input features
14584 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
14585 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
14587 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
14588 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
14589 by keyboard macros.
14591 ** Frame-related changes
14593 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
14594 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
14595 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
14597 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
14598 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
14599 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
14601 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
14602 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
14603 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
14604 in the selected frame.
14606 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
14607 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
14608 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
14610 ** X Windows features
14612 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
14613 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
14614 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
14616 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
14617 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
14619 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
14620 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
14621 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
14623 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
14624 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
14626 ** Subprocess features
14628 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
14629 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
14632 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
14633 and returns the output from the command as a string.
14635 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
14636 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
14638 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
14639 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
14641 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
14642 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
14643 goes after the other menu items.
14645 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
14646 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
14647 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
14650 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
14651 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
14653 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
14654 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
14657 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
14658 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
14659 but its hook is still run.
14661 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
14662 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
14664 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
14665 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
14666 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
14668 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
14669 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
14670 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
14673 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
14674 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
14676 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
14677 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
14678 functions like display-time.
14680 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
14681 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
14683 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
14684 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
14685 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
14687 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
14688 if there is an error in compilation.
14690 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
14691 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
14692 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
14693 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
14695 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
14696 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
14697 the *scratch* buffer.
14699 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
14700 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
14701 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
14702 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
14704 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
14705 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
14706 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
14708 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
14709 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
14710 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
14711 and compose-mail-other-frame.
14713 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
14714 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
14715 full name of the specified user will be returned.
14717 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
14718 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
14719 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
14720 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
14721 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
14724 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
14725 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
14726 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
14727 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
14729 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
14730 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
14731 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
14732 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
14734 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
14736 ** imenu.el changes.
14738 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
14739 item from menu created by imenu.
14741 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
14742 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
14743 select one of those items.
14745 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
14747 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
14748 Copyright information:
14750 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
14751 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
14753 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
14754 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
14755 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
14756 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
14758 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
14759 of this document, or of portions of it,
14760 under the above conditions, provided also that they
14761 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
14765 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
14768 arch-tag: 1aca9dfa-2ac4-4d14-bebf-0007cee12793