1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2001-03-15
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
9 +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
10 --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
11 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
15 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.3
17 ** Emacs now supports new configure options `--program-prefix',
18 `--program-suffix' and `--program-transform-name' that affect the names of
22 ** Leim is now part of the Emacs distribution.
23 You no longer need to download a separate tarball in order to build
26 ** Support for FreeBSD/Alpha has been added.
29 * Changes in Emacs 21.3
31 ** Info-index finally offers completion.
33 ** Controlling the left and right fringe widths.
35 The left and right fringe widths can now be controlled by setting the
36 `left-fringe' and `right-fringe' frame parameters to an integer value
37 specifying the width in pixels. Setting the width to 0 effectively
38 removes the corresponding fringe.
40 The actual fringe widths may deviate from the specified widths, since
41 the combined fringe widths must match an integral number of columns.
42 The extra width is distributed evenly between the left and right fringe.
43 For force a specific fringe width, specify the width as a negative
44 integer (if both widths are negative, only the left fringe gets the
47 Setting the width to nil (the default), restores the default fringe
48 width which is the minimum number of pixels necessary to display any
49 of the currently defined fringe bitmaps. The width of the built-in
50 fringe bitmaps is 8 pixels.
52 ** C-w in incremental search now grabs either a character or a word,
53 making the decision in a heuristic way. This new job is done by the
54 command `isearch-yank-word-or-char'. To restore the old behavior,
55 bind C-w to `isearch-yank-word' in `isearch-mode-map'.
57 ** In GUD mode when talking to GDB, C-x C-a C-j "jumps" the program
58 counter to the specified source line (the one where point is).
60 ** hide-ifdef-mode now uses overlays rather than selective-display
61 to hide its text. This should be mostly transparent but slightly
62 changes the behavior of motion commands line C-e and C-p.
64 ** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now
65 control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded
66 by whitespace. This means you can now use them as shell wildcards
67 too. If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the
68 doublequotes make no differentce in the shell, but they prevent
69 special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'.
71 ** Unquoted `$' in file names do not signal an error any more when
72 the corresponding environment variable does not exist.
73 Instead, the `$ENVVAR' text is left as is, so that `$$' quoting
74 is only rarely needed.
76 ** jit-lock can now be delayed with `jit-lock-defer-time'.
78 If this variable is non-nil, its value should be the amount of Emacs
79 idle time in seconds to wait before starting fontification. For
80 example, if you set `jit-lock-defer-time' to 0.25, fontification will
81 only happen after 0.25s of idle time.
83 ** If you hit M-C-SPC (mark-sexp) repeatedly, the marked region
84 will now be extended each time, so you can mark the next two sexps with
85 M-C-SPC M-C-SPC, for example.
87 ** In the *Occur* buffer, `o' switches to it in another window, and
88 C-o displays the current line's occurrence in another window without
91 ** When you specify a frame size with --geometry, the size applies to
92 all frames you create. A position specified with --geometry only
93 affects the initial frame.
96 ** M-h (mark-paragraph) now accepts a prefix arg.
97 With positive arg, M-h marks the current and the following paragraphs;
98 if the arg is negative, it marks the current and the preceding
101 ** In Dired, the w command now copies the current line's file name
104 ** The variables dired-free-space-program and dired-free-space-args
105 have been renamed to directory-free-space-program and
106 directory-free-space-args, and they now apply whenever Emacs puts a
107 directory listing into a buffer.
109 ** mouse-wheels can now scroll a specific fraction of the window
110 (rather than a fixed number of lines) and the scrolling is `progressive'.
112 ** The keyboard-coding-system is now automatically set based on
113 your current locale settings. If it turns out that your terminal
114 does not support the encoding implied by your locale (for example,
115 it inserts non-ASCII chars if you hit M-i), you will need to add
117 (set-keyboard-coding-system nil)
119 to your .emacs to revert to the old behavior.
121 ** A new coding system `euc-tw' has been added for traditional Chinese
122 in CNS encoding; it accepts both Big 5 and CNS as input; on saving,
123 Big 5 is then converted to CNS.
126 ** Emacs now reads the standard abbrevs file ~/.abbrev_defs
127 automatically at startup, if it exists. When Emacs offers to save
128 modified buffers, it saves the abbrevs too if they have changed. It
129 can do this either silently or asking for confirmation first,
130 according to the value of `save-abbrevs'.
132 ** Display of hollow cursors now obeys the buffer-local value (if any)
133 of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' in the buffer that the cursor
136 ** The default values of `tooltip-delay' and `tooltip-hide-delay'
139 ** On terminals whose erase-char is ^H (Backspace), Emacs
140 now uses normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.
144 *** In Prolog, etags creates tags for rules in addition to predicates.
146 *** In Perl, packages are tags. Subroutine tags are named from their
147 package. You can jump to sub tags as you did before, by the sub name, or
148 additionally by looking for package::sub.
150 *** New language PHP: tags are functions, classes and defines. If
151 the --members option is specified to etags, tags are vars also.
154 ** The command line option --no-windows has been changed to
155 --no-window-system. The old one still works, but is deprecated.
157 ** `buffer-menu' and `list-buffers' now list buffers whose names begin
158 with a space, if they visit files.
160 ** You can now customize fill-nobreak-predicate to control where
161 filling can break lines. We provide two sample predicates,
162 fill-single-word-nobreak-p and fill-french-nobreak-p.
164 ** New user option `add-log-always-start-new-record'.
165 When this option is enabled, M-x add-change-log-entry will always
166 start a new record regardless of when the last record is.
168 ** New user option `sgml-xml'.
169 When this option is enabled, SGML tags are inserted in XML style,
170 i.e., there is always a closing tag.
171 When not customized, it becomes buffer-local when it can be inferred
172 from the file name or buffer contents.
174 ** New user option `isearch-resume-enabled'.
175 This option can be disabled, to avoid the normal behaviour of isearch
176 which puts calls to `isearch-resume' in the command history.
178 ** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from
179 initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode,
180 instead of using default-major-mode.
182 ** Byte compiler warning and error messages have been brought more
183 in line with the output of other GNU tools.
185 ** Lisp-mode now uses font-lock-doc-face for the docstrings.
187 ** perl-mode has a new variable `perl-indent-continued-arguments'.
189 ** `special-display-buffer-names' and `special-display-regexps' now
190 understand two new boolean pseudo-frame-parameters `same-frame' and
193 ** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
194 much pure storage it will approximately need.
196 ** M-x setenv now expands environment variables of the form `$foo' and
197 `${foo}' in the specified new value of the environment variable. To
198 include a `$' in the value, use `$$'.
201 ** File-name completion can now ignore directories.
202 If an element of the list in `completion-ignored-extensions' ends in a
203 slash `/', it indicates a subdirectory that should be ignored when
204 completing file names. Elements of `completion-ignored-extensions'
205 which do not end in a slash are never considered when a completion
206 candidate is a directory.
208 ** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'.
209 When loading many files, for instance with `emacs *', Emacs normally
210 displays a buffer menu. This option turns the buffer menu off.
212 ** Rmail now displays 5-digit message ids in its summary buffer.
214 ** When using M-x revert-buffer in a compilation buffer to rerun a
215 compilation, it is now made sure that the compilation buffer is reused
216 in case it has been renamed.
218 ** On MS Windows, the "system caret" now follows the cursor.
219 This enables Emacs to work better with programs that need to track
220 the cursor, for example screen magnifiers and text to speech programs.
222 ** Tooltips now work on MS Windows.
223 See the Emacs 21.1 NEWS entry for tooltips for details.
226 ** A French translation of the `Emacs Survival Guide' is available.
229 ** A French translation of the Emacs Tutorial is available.
231 ** New modes and packages
234 *** Calc is now part of the Emacs distribution.
236 Calc is an advanced desk calculator and mathematical tool written in
237 Emacs Lisp. Its documentation is in a separate manual; within Emacs,
238 type "C-h i m calc RET" to read that manual. A reference card is
239 available in `etc/calccard.tex' and `etc/calccard.ps'.
242 *** The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is now part of the distribution.
244 The ELisp reference manual in Info format is built as part of the
245 Emacs build procedure and installed together with the Emacs User
246 Manual. A menu item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy
247 accessible (Help->More Manuals->Emacs Lisp Reference).
249 *** The Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp manual is now part of
252 This manual is now part of the standard distribution and is installed,
253 together with the Emacs User Manual, into the Info directory. A menu
254 item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy accessible
255 (Help->More Manuals->Introduction to Emacs Lisp).
257 *** The ruler-mode.el library provides a minor mode for displaying an
258 "active" ruler in the header line. You can use the mouse to visually
259 change the `fill-column', `window-margins' and `tab-stop-list'
262 *** The reveal.el package provides the minor modes `reveal-mode' and
263 `global-reveal-mode' which will make text visible on the fly as you
264 move your cursor into hidden region of the buffer.
265 It should work with any package that uses overlays to hide parts
266 of a buffer, such as outline-minor-mode, hs-minor-mode, hide-ifdef-mode, ...
268 *** master-mode.el implements a minor mode for scrolling a slave
269 buffer without leaving your current buffer, the master buffer.
271 It can be used by sql.el, for example: the SQL buffer is the master
272 and its SQLi buffer is the slave. This allows you to scroll the SQLi
273 buffer containing the output from the SQL buffer containing the
276 This is how to use sql.el and master.el together: the variable
277 sql-buffer contains the slave buffer. It is a local variable in the
280 (add-hook 'sql-mode-hook
283 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
284 (add-hook 'sql-set-sqli-hook
286 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
289 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.3
291 ** Already true in Emacs 21.1, but not emphasized clearly enough:
293 Multibyte buffers can now faithfully record all 256 character codes
294 from 0 to 255. As a result, most of the past reasons to use unibyte
295 buffers no longer exist. We only know of three reasons to use them
298 1. If you prefer to use unibyte text all of the time.
300 2. For reading files into temporary buffers, when you want to avoid
301 the time it takes to convert the format.
303 3. For binary files where format conversion would be pointless and
306 ** If text has a `keymap' property, that keymap takes precedence
307 over minor mode keymaps.
309 ** A hex escape in a string forces the string to be multibyte.
310 An octal escape makes it unibyte.
312 ** The position after an invisible, intangible character
313 is considered an unacceptable value for point;
314 intangibility processing effectively treats the following character
315 as part of the intangible region even if it is not itself intangible.
317 Thus, point can go before an invisible, intangible region, but not
318 after it. This prevents C-f and C-b from appearing to stand still on
322 ** define-abbrev now accepts an optional argument SYSTEM-FLAG. If
323 non-nil, this marks the abbrev as a "system" abbrev, which means that
324 it won't be stored in the user's abbrevs file if he saves the abbrevs.
325 Major modes that predefine some abbrevs should always specify this
328 ** Support for Mocklisp has been removed.
330 ** The function insert-string is now obsolete.
332 ** The precedence of file-name-handlers has been changed.
333 Instead of blindly choosing the first handler that matches,
334 find-file-name-handler now gives precedence to a file-name handler
335 that matches near the end of the file name. More specifically, the
336 handler whose (match-beginning 0) is the largest is chosen.
337 In case of ties, the old "first matched" rule applies.
339 ** Dense keymaps now handle inheritance correctly.
340 Previously a dense keymap would hide all of the simple-char key
341 bindings of the parent keymap.
343 ** jit-lock obeys a new text-property `jit-lock-defer-multiline'.
344 If a piece of text with that property gets contextually refontified
345 (see jit-lock-defer-contextually), then all of that text will
346 be refontified. This is useful when the syntax of a textual element
347 depends on text several lines further down (and when font-lock-multiline
348 is not appropriate to solve that problem). For example in Perl:
356 Adding/removing the last `e' changes the `bar' from being a piece of
357 text to being a piece of code, so you'd put a jit-lock-defer-multiline
358 property over the second half of the command to force (deferred)
359 refontification of `bar' whenever the `e' is added/removed.
361 ** describe-vector now takes a second argument `describer' which is
362 called to print the entries' values. It defaults to `princ'.
364 ** defcustom and other custom declarations now use a default group
365 (the last group defined in the same file) when no :group was given.
367 ** emacsserver now runs pre-command-hook and post-command-hook when
368 it receives a request from emacsclient.
370 ** The variable `recursive-load-depth-limit' has been deleted.
371 Emacs now signals an error if the same file is loaded with more
372 than 3 levels of nesting.
374 ** The default values of paragraph-start and indent-line-function have
375 been changed to reflect those used in Text mode rather than those used
376 in Indented-Text mode.
378 ** If a major mode function has a non-nil `no-clone-indirect'
379 property, `clone-indirect-buffer' signals an error if you use
382 ** If you set `query-replace-skip-read-only' non-nil,
383 `query-replace' and related functions simply ignore
384 a match if part of it has a read-only property.
386 ** In `replace-match', the replacement text no longer inherits
387 properties from surrounding text.
389 ** New function `buffer-local-value'.
391 - Function: buffer-local-value variable buffer
393 This function returns the buffer-local binding of VARIABLE (a symbol)
394 in buffer BUFFER. If VARIABLE does not have a buffer-local binding in
395 buffer BUFFER, it returns the default value of VARIABLE instead.
397 ** The default value of `paragraph-start' and `indent-line-function' has
398 been changed to reflect the one used in Text mode rather than the one
399 used in Indented Text mode.
401 ** New function `text-clone-create'. Text clones are chunks of text
402 that are kept identical by transparently propagating changes from one
405 ** font-lock can manage arbitrary text-properties beside `face'.
406 *** the FACENAME returned in font-lock-keywords can be a list
407 of the form (face FACE PROP1 VAL1 PROP@ VAL2 ...) so you can set
408 other properties than `face'.
409 *** font-lock-extra-managed-props can be set to make sure those extra
410 properties are automatically cleaned up by font-lock.
412 ** The new function `run-mode-hooks' and the new macro `delay-mode-hooks'
413 are used by define-derived-mode to make sure the mode hook for the
414 parent mode is run at the end of the child mode.
416 ** `provide' and `featurep' now accept an optional second argument
417 to test/provide subfeatures. Also `provide' now checks `after-load-alist'
418 and run any code associated with the provided feature.
420 ** The variable `compilation-parse-errors-filename-function' can
421 be used to transform filenames found in compilation output.
424 ** Functions `file-name-sans-extension' and `file-name-extension' now
425 ignore the leading dots in file names, so that file names such as
426 `.emacs' are treated as extensionless.
428 ** Functions `user-uid' and `user-real-uid' now return floats if the
429 user UID doesn't fit in a Lisp integer. Function `user-full-name'
430 accepts a float as UID parameter.
432 ** `define-key-after' now accepts keys longer than 1.
434 ** `define-derived-mode' now accepts nil as the parent.
436 ** The local variable `no-byte-compile' in elisp files is now obeyed.
438 ** New functions `keymap-prompt' and `current-active-maps'.
440 ** New function `describe-buffer-bindings'.
442 ** New vars `exec-suffixes' and `load-suffixes' used when
443 searching for an executable resp. an elisp file.
445 ** Variable aliases have been implemented
447 - Macro: defvaralias ALIAS-VAR BASE-VAR
449 This defines the symbol ALIAS-VAR as a variable alias for symbol
450 BASE-VAR. This means that retrieving the value of ALIAS-VAR returns
451 the value of BASE-VAR, and changing the value of ALIAS-VAR changes the
454 - Function: indirect-variable VARIABLE
456 This function returns the variable at the end of the chain of aliases
457 of VARIABLE. If VARIABLE is not a symbol, or if VARIABLE is not
458 defined as an alias, the function returns VARIABLE.
460 It might be noteworthy that variables aliases work for all kinds of
461 variables, including buffer-local and frame-local variables.
463 ** Functions from `post-gc-hook' are run at the end of garbage
464 collection. The hook is run with GC inhibited, so use it with care.
466 ** If the second argument to `copy-file' is the name of a directory,
467 the file is copied to that directory instead of signaling an error.
469 ** The variables most-positive-fixnum and most-negative-fixnum
470 have been moved from the CL package to the core.
472 ** On MS Windows, locale-coding-system is used to interact with the OS.
473 The Windows specific variable w32-system-coding-system, which was
474 formerly used for that purpose is now an alias for locale-coding-system.
478 *** The new package syntax.el provides an efficient way to find the
479 current syntactic context (as returned by parse-partial-sexp).
481 *** The TCL package tcl-mode.el was replaced by tcl.el.
482 This was actually done in Emacs-21.1 was not documented.
485 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
487 See the INSTALL file for information on installing extra libraries and
488 fonts to take advantage of the new graphical features and extra
489 charsets in this release.
491 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
493 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
495 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
496 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
499 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
500 support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the
501 maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions. Changes to
502 build on other 64-bit systems should be straightforward modulo any
503 necessary changes to unexec.
505 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
506 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
508 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
509 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
511 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
512 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
514 ** This version can be built for the Macintosh, but does not implement
515 all of the new display features described below. The port currently
516 lacks unexec, asynchronous processes, and networking support. See the
517 "Emacs and the Mac OS" appendix in the Emacs manual, for the
518 description of aspects specific to the Mac.
520 ** Note that the MS-Windows port does not yet implement various of the
521 new display features described below.
524 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
526 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
528 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
529 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
530 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
531 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
534 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
536 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
537 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
538 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
539 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
542 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
543 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
544 under Lisp changes, below.
546 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
548 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
549 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
550 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
551 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
552 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
553 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
556 The command-line options `-fg COLOR', `-bg COLOR', and `-rv' are now
557 supported on character terminals.
559 Emacs automatically remaps all X-style color specifications to one of
560 the colors supported by the terminal. This means you could have the
561 same color customizations that work both on a windowed display and on
562 a TTY or when Emacs is invoked with the -nw option.
564 ** New default font is Courier 12pt under X.
568 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
569 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
570 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
571 You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes' to enable
574 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
576 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
577 longer than one line, Emacs can resize the minibuffer window unless it
578 is on a frame of its own. You can control resizing and the maximum
579 minibuffer window size by setting the following variables:
581 - User option: max-mini-window-height
583 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
584 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
585 specifies a number of lines.
589 - User option: resize-mini-windows
591 How to resize mini-windows. If nil, don't resize. If t, always
592 resize to fit the size of the text. If `grow-only', let mini-windows
593 grow only, until they become empty, at which point they are shrunk
596 Default is `grow-only'.
600 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see
601 <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will need version 0.92.26, or later.
603 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
605 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
606 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
609 ** File selection dialog on MS-Windows is supported.
611 When a file is visited by clicking File->Open, the MS-Windows version
612 now pops up a standard file selection dialog where you can select a
613 file to visit. File->Save As also pops up that dialog.
615 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
617 Emacs now uses toolkit scroll bars if available. When configured for
618 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scroll bar. Otherwise, when
619 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
620 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
621 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
624 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
625 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
626 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
627 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
628 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
629 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
631 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
632 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
633 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
634 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
635 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
636 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
638 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
639 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
640 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
641 imake configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
642 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
646 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
647 of how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level
648 changes. Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is
649 displayed and is on by default. The appearance of the bar is improved
650 if Emacs has been built with XPM image support. Otherwise monochrome
653 To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons
654 for specific modes (with copyright assignments).
658 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
659 mouse position. The Lisp package `tooltip' implements them. You can
660 turn them off via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
662 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
663 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
664 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
665 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
667 ** Automatic Hscrolling
669 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
670 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
673 If a window is scrolled horizontally with set-window-hscroll, or
674 scroll-left/scroll-right (C-x <, C-x >), this serves as a lower bound
675 for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will scroll
676 the text more to the left if necessary, but won't scroll the text more
677 to the right than the column set with set-window-hscroll etc.
679 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
680 of its own. By default, when a window is selected, the cursor is
681 solid; otherwise, it is hollow. The user-option
682 `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to display the
683 cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is shown, if
684 non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown.
686 ** Fringes to the left and right of windows are used to display
687 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
688 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
689 customizing face `fringe'.
691 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default.
692 You can change its appearance by modifying the face `mode-line'.
693 In particular, setting the `:box' attribute to nil turns off the 3D
694 appearance of the mode line. (The 3D appearance makes the mode line
695 occupy more space, and thus might cause the first or the last line of
696 the window to be partially obscured.)
698 The variable `mode-line-inverse-video', which was used in older
699 versions of emacs to make the mode-line stand out, is now deprecated.
700 However, setting it to nil will cause the `mode-line' face to be
701 ignored, and mode-lines to be drawn using the default text face.
703 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
705 Different parts of the mode line have been made mouse-sensitive on all
706 systems which support the mouse. Moving the mouse to a
707 mouse-sensitive part in the mode line changes the appearance of the
708 mouse pointer to an arrow, and help about available mouse actions is
709 displayed either in the echo area, or in the tooltip window if you
712 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
714 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line goes to the next buffer.
716 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name goes to the previous buffer.
718 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
719 `*') toggles the status.
721 - Mouse-3 on the mode name displays a minor-mode menu.
725 Emacs can optionally display an hourglass pointer under X. You can
726 turn the display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
730 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
731 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
732 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
735 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
737 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
738 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
739 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
742 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
743 have to do anything to activate it.
745 ** The default binding of the Delete key has changed.
747 The new user-option `normal-erase-is-backspace' can be set to
748 determine the effect of the Delete and Backspace function keys.
750 On window systems, the default value of this option is chosen
751 according to the keyboard used. If the keyboard has both a Backspace
752 key and a Delete key, and both are mapped to their usual meanings, the
753 option's default value is set to t, so that Backspace can be used to
754 delete backward, and Delete can be used to delete forward. On
755 keyboards which either have only one key (usually labeled DEL), or two
756 keys DEL and BS which produce the same effect, the option's value is
757 set to nil, and these keys delete backward.
759 If not running under a window system, setting this option accomplishes
760 a similar effect by mapping C-h, which is usually generated by the
761 Backspace key, to DEL, and by mapping DEL to C-d via
762 `keyboard-translate'. The former functionality of C-h is available on
763 the F1 key. You should probably not use this setting on a text-only
764 terminal if you don't have both Backspace, Delete and F1 keys.
766 Programmatically, you can call function normal-erase-is-backspace-mode
767 to toggle the behavior of the Delete and Backspace keys.
769 ** The default for user-option `next-line-add-newlines' has been
770 changed to nil, i.e. C-n will no longer add newlines at the end of a
773 ** The <home> and <end> keys now move to the beginning or end of the
774 current line, respectively. C-<home> and C-<end> move to the
775 beginning and end of the buffer.
777 ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the
778 recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is
781 ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
782 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
784 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
785 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
788 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs's byte
789 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
792 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
794 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
795 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
796 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
798 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
799 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
800 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
802 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
805 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
807 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
808 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
809 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
810 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
811 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
814 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
815 all frames except the selected one.
817 ** The new user-option `confirm-kill-emacs' can be customized to
818 let Emacs ask for confirmation before exiting.
820 ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs
821 header-line (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window),
822 so that it remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled.
823 This behavior may be disabled by customizing the option
824 `Info-use-header-line'.
826 ** Polish, Czech, German, and French translations of Emacs' reference card
827 have been added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex', `cs-refcard.tex',
828 `de-refcard.tex' and `fr-refcard.tex'. Postscript files are included.
830 ** An `Emacs Survival Guide', etc/survival.tex, is available.
832 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
833 `dired-ref.tex'. A French translation is available in
836 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
837 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
838 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
839 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
841 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable through Customize.
843 You can no longer use `M-x customize-variable' to customize `load-path'
844 because it now contains a version-dependent component. You can still
845 use `add-to-list' and `setq' to customize this variable in your
846 `~/.emacs' init file or to modify it from any Lisp program in general.
848 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
849 point in a pop-up window.
851 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
852 under XFree86. To enable this, use the `mouse-wheel-mode' command, or
853 customize the variable `mouse-wheel-mode'.
855 The variables `mouse-wheel-follow-mouse' and `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'
856 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
858 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
859 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
860 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
861 You can customize `auto-save-list-file-prefix' to change this location.
863 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
865 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
866 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
868 ** The new command M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET will delete the
869 trailing whitespace within the current restriction. You can also add
870 this function to `write-file-hooks' or `local-write-file-hooks'.
872 ** When visiting a file with M-x find-file-literally, no newlines will
873 be added to the end of the buffer even if `require-final-newline' is
876 ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be
877 set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a
878 file that is already visited under a different name.
880 ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to
881 nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size.
883 ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name
884 and displays information about that.
886 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
887 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
889 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
890 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
891 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
892 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
893 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
894 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
896 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
897 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
899 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
900 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
901 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
902 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
903 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
904 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
905 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
907 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
908 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
910 ** The new Custom option `keyboard-coding-system' specifies a coding
911 system for keyboard input.
913 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
914 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
915 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
916 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
917 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
918 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
919 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
920 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
921 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
923 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
924 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
926 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
927 displays all characters in that character set.
929 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
930 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
932 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
933 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
934 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
936 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
937 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
938 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
939 GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet but recent X releases have
940 8859-15. See etc/INSTALL for information on obtaining extra fonts.
941 There are new Leim input methods for Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix (only)
944 ** New language environments `Dutch' and `Spanish'.
945 These new environments mainly select appropriate translations
948 ** In Ethiopic language environment, special key bindings for
949 function keys are changed as follows. This is to conform to "Emacs
950 Lisp Coding Convention".
952 new command old-binding
953 --- ------- -----------
954 f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-buffer f5
955 S-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-region f5
956 C-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-mail-or-marker f5
958 f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-buffer unchanged
959 S-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-region unchanged
960 C-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-mail-or-marker unchanged
962 S-f5 ethio-toggle-punctuation f3
963 S-f6 ethio-modify-vowel f6
964 S-f7 ethio-replace-space f7
965 S-f8 ethio-input-special-character f8
966 S-f9 ethio-replace-space unchanged
967 C-f9 ethio-toggle-space f2
969 ** There are new Leim input methods.
970 New input methods "turkish-postfix", "turkish-alt-postfix",
971 "greek-mizuochi", "TeX", and "greek-babel" are now part of the Leim
974 ** The rule of input method "slovak" is slightly changed. Now the
975 rules for translating "q" and "Q" to "`" (backquote) are deleted, thus
976 typing them inserts "q" and "Q" respectively. Rules for translating
977 "=q", "+q", "=Q", and "+Q" to "`" are also deleted. Now, to input
978 "`", you must type "=q".
980 ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO
981 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display
982 more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of
983 empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a
984 window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this
987 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
988 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
989 defined in newcomment.el. You can choose different styles of region
990 commenting with the variable `comment-style'.
992 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
993 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
994 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
995 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
997 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
998 on the display using several methods
1000 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
1001 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
1002 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
1004 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
1005 equivalent to specifying the frame parameter.
1007 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
1009 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
1010 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
1012 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
1013 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
1014 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
1015 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
1017 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
1018 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
1019 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
1021 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
1022 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
1024 ** New X resources recognized
1026 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
1027 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
1028 is useful for debugging X problems.
1032 emacs.synchronous: true
1034 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
1035 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
1036 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
1037 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
1038 visual class names are
1047 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
1048 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
1051 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
1052 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
1053 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
1058 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
1060 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
1061 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
1062 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
1063 resource values are `true' or `on'.
1067 emacs.privateColormap: true
1069 ** Faces and frame parameters.
1071 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
1072 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
1073 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
1074 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
1075 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
1076 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
1077 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
1079 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
1080 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
1081 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
1082 `default' face and vice versa.
1086 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
1088 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
1090 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
1091 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
1092 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
1093 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
1095 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
1096 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
1097 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
1099 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
1102 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
1104 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
1105 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
1106 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
1107 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
1109 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
1111 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
1113 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
1115 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
1118 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
1121 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
1123 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
1124 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
1125 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
1127 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
1128 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi and Less).
1130 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
1131 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
1132 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
1134 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
1136 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
1137 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggressively' is a
1138 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
1139 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
1141 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
1142 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggressively' is a
1143 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
1144 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
1146 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
1147 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
1148 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
1151 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
1153 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
1154 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
1155 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
1157 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
1158 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
1159 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
1160 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
1161 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
1162 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
1164 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
1166 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
1167 notably at the end of lines.
1169 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
1170 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
1172 ** The function `replace-rectangle' is an alias for `string-rectangle'.
1174 ** The new command M-x string-insert-rectangle is like `string-rectangle',
1175 but inserts text instead of replacing it.
1177 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
1178 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
1179 after each match to get the replacement text.
1181 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
1182 you edit the replacement string.
1184 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB'
1185 (if you load the library `mailabbrev'), lets you complete mail aliases
1186 in the text, analogous to lisp-complete-symbol.
1188 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
1190 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
1191 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
1193 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
1194 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
1195 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
1196 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
1199 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
1200 read mail from the menu etc.
1202 ** The environment variable `EMACSLOCKDIR' is no longer used on MS-Windows.
1203 This environment variable was used when creating lock files. Emacs on
1204 MS-Windows does not use this variable anymore. This change was made
1205 before Emacs 21.1, but wasn't documented until now.
1207 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
1208 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
1210 ** The new command `msdos-set-mouse-buttons' forces the MS-DOS version
1211 of Emacs to behave as if the mouse had a specified number of buttons.
1212 This comes handy with mice that don't report their number of buttons
1213 correctly. One example is the wheeled mice, which report 3 buttons,
1214 but clicks on the middle button are not passed to the MS-DOS version
1217 ** Customize changes
1219 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
1220 `State' menu to add comments, or give a prefix argument to
1221 M-x customize-set-variable or M-x customize-set-value. Note that
1222 customization comments will cause the customizations to fail in
1223 earlier versions of Emacs.
1225 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
1226 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
1229 *** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it
1230 does not allow you to save customizations in your `~/.emacs' init
1231 file. This is because saving customizations from such a session would
1232 wipe out all the other customizationss you might have on your init
1235 ** New features in evaluation commands
1237 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
1238 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
1239 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the new
1240 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
1241 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
1243 The default values for the first two of these variables are 12 and 4
1244 respectively, which means that `eval-expression' now prints at most
1245 the first 12 members of a list and at most 4 nesting levels deep (if
1246 the list is longer or deeper than that, an ellipsis `...' is
1249 <RET> or <mouse-2> on the printed text toggles between an abbreviated
1250 printed representation and an unabbreviated one.
1252 The default value of eval-expression-debug-on-error is t, so any error
1253 during evaluation produces a backtrace.
1255 *** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
1256 code when called with a prefix argument.
1260 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
1261 current user setups (although it's believed that these
1262 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
1263 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
1264 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
1265 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
1268 *** The hardcoded switch to "java" style in Java mode is gone.
1269 CC Mode used to automatically set the style to "java" when Java mode
1270 is entered. This has now been removed since it caused too much
1273 However, to keep backward compatibility to a certain extent, the
1274 default value for c-default-style now specifies the "java" style for
1275 java-mode, but "gnu" for all other modes (as before). So you won't
1276 notice the change if you haven't touched that variable.
1278 *** New cleanups, space-before-funcall and compact-empty-funcall.
1279 Two new cleanups have been added to c-cleanup-list:
1281 space-before-funcall causes a space to be inserted before the opening
1282 parenthesis of a function call, which gives the style "foo (bar)".
1284 compact-empty-funcall causes any space before a function call opening
1285 parenthesis to be removed if there are no arguments to the function.
1286 It's typically useful together with space-before-funcall to get the
1287 style "foo (bar)" and "foo()".
1289 *** Some keywords now automatically trigger reindentation.
1290 Keywords like "else", "while", "catch" and "finally" have been made
1291 "electric" to make them reindent automatically when they continue an
1292 earlier statement. An example:
1294 for (i = 0; i < 17; i++)
1296 res += a[i]->offset;
1299 Here, the "else" should be indented like the preceding "if", since it
1300 continues that statement. CC Mode will automatically reindent it after
1301 the "else" has been typed in full, since it's not until then it's
1302 possible to decide whether it's a new statement or a continuation of
1305 CC Mode uses Abbrev mode to achieve this, which is therefore turned on
1308 *** M-a and M-e now moves by sentence in multiline strings.
1309 Previously these two keys only moved by sentence in comments, which
1310 meant that sentence movement didn't work in strings containing
1311 documentation or other natural language text.
1313 The reason it's only activated in multiline strings (i.e. strings that
1314 contain a newline, even when escaped by a '\') is to avoid stopping in
1315 the short strings that often reside inside statements. Multiline
1316 strings almost always contain text in a natural language, as opposed
1317 to other strings that typically contain format specifications,
1318 commands, etc. Also, it's not that bothersome that M-a and M-e misses
1319 sentences in single line strings, since they're short anyway.
1321 *** Support for autodoc comments in Pike mode.
1322 Autodoc comments for Pike are used to extract documentation from the
1323 source, like Javadoc in Java. Pike mode now recognize this markup in
1324 comment prefixes and paragraph starts.
1326 *** The comment prefix regexps on c-comment-prefix may be mode specific.
1327 When c-comment-prefix is an association list, it specifies the comment
1328 line prefix on a per-mode basis, like c-default-style does. This
1329 change came about to support the special autodoc comment prefix in
1332 *** Better handling of syntactic errors.
1333 The recovery after unbalanced parens earlier in the buffer has been
1334 improved; CC Mode now reports them by dinging and giving a message
1335 stating the offending line, but still recovers and indent the
1336 following lines in a sane way (most of the time). An "else" with no
1337 matching "if" is handled similarly. If an error is discovered while
1338 indenting a region, the whole region is still indented and the error
1339 is reported afterwards.
1341 *** Lineup functions may now return absolute columns.
1342 A lineup function can give an absolute column to indent the line to by
1343 returning a vector with the desired column as the first element.
1345 *** More robust and warning-free byte compilation.
1346 Although this is strictly not a user visible change (well, depending
1347 on the view of a user), it's still worth mentioning that CC Mode now
1348 can be compiled in the standard ways without causing trouble. Some
1349 code have also been moved between the subpackages to enhance the
1350 modularity somewhat. Thanks to Martin Buchholz for doing the
1353 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
1354 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
1355 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
1356 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
1357 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
1360 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
1361 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
1362 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
1363 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
1364 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
1365 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
1367 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
1368 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
1369 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
1370 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
1371 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
1372 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
1373 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
1374 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
1376 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
1377 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
1378 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
1379 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
1382 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
1383 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
1384 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
1385 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
1386 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
1387 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
1388 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
1389 function documentation for more info.
1391 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
1392 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
1393 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
1394 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
1395 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
1396 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
1397 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
1398 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
1400 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
1402 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
1403 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
1405 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
1406 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
1407 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
1408 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
1409 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
1412 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
1413 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
1414 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
1417 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
1418 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
1419 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
1420 chapter about this in the manual.
1422 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
1423 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
1424 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
1425 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
1426 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
1428 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
1429 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
1430 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
1432 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
1433 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
1435 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
1436 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
1437 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
1440 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
1441 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
1442 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
1443 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
1446 **** The variables `c-hanging-comment-starter-p' and
1447 `c-hanging-comment-ender-p', which controlled how comment starters and
1448 enders were filled, are not used anymore. The new version of the
1449 function `c-fill-paragraph' keeps the comment starters and enders as
1450 they were before the filling.
1452 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
1453 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
1454 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
1457 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
1458 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
1459 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
1460 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
1463 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
1464 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
1465 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
1466 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
1467 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1469 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1470 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1471 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1473 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1475 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1476 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1477 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1478 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1480 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1481 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1482 the column specified by comment-column.
1484 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1485 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1486 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1487 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1488 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1489 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1491 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1492 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1495 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1497 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1498 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1499 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1500 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1503 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1507 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
1508 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
1509 is, delete only empty directories.
1511 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
1512 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
1513 copy directories recursively.
1515 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
1516 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
1517 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
1519 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
1520 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
1523 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `y') shows
1524 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
1525 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
1526 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
1527 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
1529 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
1532 *** Dired commands that prompt for a destination file now allow the use
1533 of the `M-n' command in the minibuffer to insert the source filename,
1534 which the user can then edit. This only works if there is a single
1535 source file, not when operating on multiple marked files.
1539 The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in
1540 four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment,
1541 internationalization and mail-fetching.
1543 *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the
1544 many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone.
1546 If you used procmail like in
1548 (setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
1549 (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail)
1550 (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/")
1551 (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in")
1553 this now has changed to
1556 '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/"
1559 More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods ->
1560 Getting Mail -> Mail Sources
1562 *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of
1563 Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details.
1564 Separate MIME packages like RMIME, mime-compose etc., will probably no
1565 longer work; remove them and use the native facilities.
1567 The FLIM/SEMI package still works with Emacs 21, but if you want to
1568 use the native facilities, you must remove any mailcap.el[c] that was
1569 installed by FLIM/SEMI version 1.13 or earlier.
1571 *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many
1572 parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. There
1573 are built-in facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is
1574 now just a compatibility layer.
1576 *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in
1579 *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be
1580 called to position point.
1582 *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in
1583 summary buffers and NOV files.
1585 *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number
1586 of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added.
1588 *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a
1589 subtly different manner.
1591 *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive
1592 and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with
1593 ever-changing layouts.
1595 *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap.
1597 *** There is image support of various kinds and some sound support.
1599 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
1601 *** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
1605 -------------------------
1609 C-c C-c q @quotation
1611 C-c C-o @<block> ... @end <block>
1614 *** The " key now inserts either " or `` or '' depending on context.
1616 ** Changes in Outline mode.
1618 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
1619 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
1620 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
1622 ** Changes to Emacs Server
1624 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
1625 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
1626 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
1627 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
1628 buffers to kill, as before.
1630 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
1631 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
1634 ** Both emacsclient and Emacs itself now accept command line options
1635 of the form +LINE:COLUMN in addition to +LINE.
1637 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
1639 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
1640 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
1641 use. Default is 1000.
1643 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
1644 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
1646 ** Changes to hideshow.el
1648 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
1650 A block is now recognized by its start and end regexps (both strings),
1651 and an integer specifying which sub-expression in the start regexp
1652 serves as the place where a `forward-sexp'-like function can operate.
1653 See the documentation of variable `hs-special-modes-alist'.
1655 *** During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active,
1656 hidden blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' can
1657 be used in the mode line format to show the line at the beginning of
1660 *** User option `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' specifies a
1661 function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead of
1662 the normal block-hiding function.
1664 *** The command `hs-show-region' has been removed.
1666 *** The key bindings have changed to fit the Emacs conventions,
1667 roughly imitating those of Outline minor mode. Notably, the prefix
1668 for all bindings is now `C-c @'. For details, see the documentation
1669 for `hs-minor-mode'.
1671 *** The variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' has been removed, and
1672 hideshow.el now always behaves as if this variable were set to t.
1674 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
1676 *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes
1677 an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
1678 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
1680 **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the
1683 *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries
1686 *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log
1687 entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
1688 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
1689 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
1690 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be customized.
1691 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
1693 *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock highlighting.
1695 ** Changes to cmuscheme
1697 *** The user-option `scheme-program-name' has been renamed
1698 `cmuscheme-program-name' due to conflicts with xscheme.el.
1700 ** Changes in Font Lock
1702 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
1703 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major mode.
1705 *** Multi-line patterns are now supported. Modes using this, should
1706 set font-lock-multiline to t in their font-lock-defaults.
1708 *** `font-lock-syntactic-face-function' allows major-modes to choose
1709 the face used for each string/comment.
1711 *** A new standard face `font-lock-doc-face'.
1712 Meant for Lisp docstrings, Javadoc comments and other "documentation in code".
1714 ** Changes to Shell mode
1716 *** The `shell' command now accepts an optional argument to specify the buffer
1717 to use, which defaults to "*shell*". When used interactively, a
1718 non-default buffer may be specified by giving the `shell' command a
1719 prefix argument (causing it to prompt for the buffer name).
1721 ** Comint (subshell) changes
1723 These changes generally affect all modes derived from comint mode, which
1724 include shell-mode, gdb-mode, scheme-interaction-mode, etc.
1726 *** Comint now by default interprets some carriage-control characters.
1727 Comint now removes CRs from CR LF sequences, and treats single CRs and
1728 BSs in the output in a way similar to a terminal (by deleting to the
1729 beginning of the line, or deleting the previous character,
1730 respectively). This is achieved by adding `comint-carriage-motion' to
1731 the `comint-output-filter-functions' hook by default.
1733 *** By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp'
1734 to distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which
1735 parts of the text were output by the process, and which entered by the
1736 user, and attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use
1737 this information. Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line,
1738 respect field boundaries in a fairly natural manner. To disable this
1739 feature, and use the old behavior, customize the user option
1740 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields'.
1742 *** Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
1743 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
1745 *** The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
1746 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
1747 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
1749 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
1750 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
1751 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
1753 *** Packages based on comint now highlight user input and program prompts,
1754 and support choosing previous input with mouse-2. To control these features,
1755 see the user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
1757 *** The new command `comint-write-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-s')
1758 saves the output from the most recent command to a file. With a prefix
1759 argument, it appends to the file.
1761 *** The command `comint-kill-output' has been renamed `comint-delete-output'
1762 (usually bound to `C-c C-o'); the old name is aliased to it for
1765 *** The new function `comint-add-to-input-history' adds commands to the input
1768 *** The new variable `comint-input-history-ignore' is a regexp for
1769 identifying history lines that should be ignored, like tcsh time-stamp
1770 strings, starting with a `#'. The default value of this variable is "^#".
1772 ** Changes to Rmail mode
1774 *** The new user-option rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
1775 set to fine tune the identification of the correspondent when
1776 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
1777 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
1778 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
1781 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
1782 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
1783 regexp matching your mail addresses.
1785 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
1786 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
1787 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
1788 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
1789 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
1791 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
1794 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
1795 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
1798 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
1799 in which folder to put messages automatically.
1801 *** The new function `rmail-redecode-body' allows to fix a message
1802 with non-ASCII characters if Emacs happens to decode it incorrectly
1803 due to missing or malformed "charset=" header.
1805 ** The new user-option `mail-envelope-from' can be used to specify
1806 an envelope-from address different from user-mail-address.
1808 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
1809 use the -f option when sending mail.
1811 ** The Rmail command `o' (`rmail-output-to-rmail-file') now writes the
1812 current message in the internal `emacs-mule' encoding, rather than in
1813 the encoding taken from the variable `buffer-file-coding-system'.
1814 This allows to save messages whose characters cannot be safely encoded
1815 by the buffer's coding system, and makes sure the message will be
1816 displayed correctly when you later visit the target Rmail file.
1818 If you want your Rmail files be encoded in a specific coding system
1819 other than `emacs-mule', you can customize the variable
1820 `rmail-file-coding-system' to set its value to that coding system.
1822 ** Changes to TeX mode
1824 *** The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
1827 *** latex-mode now has a simple indentation algorithm.
1829 *** M-f and M-p jump around \begin...\end pairs.
1831 *** Added support for outline-minor-mode.
1833 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
1835 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
1836 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
1837 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
1838 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
1839 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
1840 can be edited from that buffer.
1842 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
1843 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
1844 `A' to use all marked entries).
1846 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
1847 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
1849 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
1850 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
1851 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
1854 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
1855 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
1856 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
1857 in column 1 are always made leaves.
1859 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
1860 has the following new features:
1862 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
1863 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
1864 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
1865 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
1867 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
1868 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
1869 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
1870 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
1871 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
1874 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
1879 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
1880 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
1881 spell-checks the current buffer.
1883 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
1886 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
1887 correction is made and re-checked.
1889 *** An Italian, Portuguese, and Slovak dictionary definition has been added.
1891 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
1894 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
1897 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
1900 *** Spell checking now works in the MS-DOS version of Emacs.
1902 ** Makefile mode changes
1904 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1906 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1907 Fontlock mode is active.
1911 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1912 so that searches can be resumed.
1914 *** In Isearch mode, C-M-s and C-M-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1915 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1916 that started the search.
1918 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1919 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1921 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1923 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1924 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1925 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1926 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1927 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1928 `secondary-selection'.
1930 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1931 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1932 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1933 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1934 usual snappy response.
1936 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1937 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1938 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1939 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1943 VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it
1944 easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp
1945 Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism
1946 to enable and disable support for particular version systems has
1947 changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable
1948 `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of symbols that identify
1949 version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file,
1950 each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the
1951 file is registered in that backend.
1953 When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed
1954 backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the
1955 directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for
1956 master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then
1957 the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen.
1958 As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete.
1960 The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC
1961 still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for
1962 RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables
1963 vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS
1964 where it doesn't make sense.)
1966 The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also
1967 obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude
1968 `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now.
1972 The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding
1973 checks are always done now.
1975 VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control
1978 `vc-diff' output is now displayed in `diff-mode'.
1979 `vc-print-log' uses `log-view-mode'.
1980 `vc-log-mode' (used for *VC-Log*) has been replaced by `log-edit-mode'.
1982 The command C-x v m (vc-merge) now accepts an empty argument as the
1983 first revision number. This means that any recent changes on the
1984 current branch should be picked up from the repository and merged into
1985 the working file (``merge news'').
1987 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
1988 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) now ask for a directory name from which to work
1991 *** Multiple Backends
1993 VC now lets you register files in more than one backend. This is
1994 useful, for example, if you are working with a slow remote CVS
1995 repository. You can then use RCS for local editing, and occasionally
1996 commit your changes back to CVS, or pick up changes from CVS into your
1999 To make this work, the ``more local'' backend (RCS in our example)
2000 should come first in `vc-handled-backends', and the ``more remote''
2001 backend (CVS) should come later. (The default value of
2002 `vc-handled-backends' already has it that way.)
2004 You can then commit changes to another backend (say, RCS), by typing
2005 C-u C-x v v RCS RET (i.e. vc-next-action now accepts a backend name as
2006 a revision number). VC registers the file in the more local backend
2007 if that hasn't already happened, and commits to a branch based on the
2008 current revision number from the more remote backend.
2010 If a file is registered in multiple backends, you can switch to
2011 another one using C-x v b (vc-switch-backend). This does not change
2012 any files, it only changes VC's perspective on the file. Use this to
2013 pick up changes from CVS while working under RCS locally.
2015 After you are done with your local RCS editing, you can commit your
2016 changes back to CVS using C-u C-x v v CVS RET. In this case, the
2017 local RCS archive is removed after the commit, and the log entry
2018 buffer is initialized to contain the entire RCS change log of the file.
2022 There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the
2023 default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in
2024 remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined
2025 by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a
2026 regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts
2027 that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC
2028 queries the repository just as often as it does for local files.
2030 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, then VC also makes local backups of
2031 repository versions. This means that ordinary diffs (C-x v =) and
2032 revert operations (C-x v u) can be done completely locally, without
2033 any repository interactions at all. The name of a local version
2034 backup of FILE is FILE.~REV.~, where REV is the repository version
2035 number. This format is similar to that used by C-x v ~
2036 (vc-version-other-window), except for the trailing dot. As a matter
2037 of fact, the two features can each use the files created by the other,
2038 the only difference being that files with a trailing `.' are deleted
2039 automatically after commit. (This feature doesn't work on MS-DOS,
2040 since DOS disallows more than a single dot in the trunk of a file
2043 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the
2044 repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit.
2045 If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to
2046 commit, you can either use C-x v m RET to perform an update on the
2047 current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an
2048 entire directory tree.
2050 The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call
2051 "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option
2052 is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are
2053 "watched" by other developers.)
2055 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
2056 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) are now also implemented for CVS. If you give
2057 an empty snapshot name to the latter, that performs a `cvs update',
2058 starting at the given directory.
2060 *** Lisp Changes in VC
2062 VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now
2063 add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a
2064 library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and
2065 then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for
2066 a version system named SYS, you write a library named vc-sys.el, which
2067 provides a number of functions vc-sys-... (see commentary at the top
2068 of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library,
2069 you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the symbol
2070 `SYS' to the list `vc-handled-backends'.
2072 ** The customizable EDT emulation package now supports the EDT
2073 SUBS command and EDT scroll margins. It also works with more
2074 terminal/keyboard configurations and it now works under XEmacs.
2075 See etc/edt-user.doc for more information.
2077 ** New modes and packages
2079 *** The new global minor mode `minibuffer-electric-default-mode'
2080 automatically hides the `(default ...)' part of minibuffer prompts when
2081 the default is not applicable.
2083 *** Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines,
2084 rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. The
2085 shapes are made up with the ascii characters |, -, / and \.
2089 - Intersecting: When a `|' intersects with a `-', a `+' is
2090 drawn, like this: | \ /
2094 - Rubber-banding: When drawing lines you can interactively see the
2095 result while holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse. If
2096 your machine is not fast enough (a 386 is a bit too slow, but a
2097 pentium is well enough), you can turn this feature off. You will
2098 then see 1's and 2's which mark the 1st and 2nd endpoint of the line
2101 - Arrows: After having drawn a (straight) line or a (straight)
2102 poly-line, you can set arrows on the line-ends by typing < or >.
2104 - Flood-filling: You can fill any area with a certain character by
2107 - Cut copy and paste: You can cut, copy and paste rectangular
2108 regions. Artist also interfaces with the rect package (this can be
2109 turned off if it causes you any trouble) so anything you cut in
2110 artist can be yanked with C-x r y and vice versa.
2112 - Drawing with keys: Everything you can do with the mouse, you can
2113 also do without the mouse.
2115 - Aspect-ratio: You can set the variable artist-aspect-ratio to
2116 reflect the height-width ratio for the font you are using. Squares
2117 and circles are then drawn square/round. Note, that once your
2118 ascii-file is shown with font with a different height-width ratio,
2119 the squares won't be square and the circles won't be round.
2121 - Drawing operations: The following drawing operations are implemented:
2123 lines straight-lines
2125 poly-lines straight poly-lines
2127 text (see-thru) text (overwrite)
2128 spray-can setting size for spraying
2129 vaporize line vaporize lines
2130 erase characters erase rectangles
2132 Straight lines are lines that go horizontally, vertically or
2133 diagonally. Plain lines go in any direction. The operations in
2134 the right column are accessed by holding down the shift key while
2137 It is possible to vaporize (erase) entire lines and connected lines
2138 (rectangles for example) as long as the lines being vaporized are
2139 straight and connected at their endpoints. Vaporizing is inspired
2140 by the drawrect package by Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>.
2142 - Picture mode compatibility: Artist is picture mode compatible (this
2145 *** The new package Eshell is an operating system command shell
2146 implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp. Use `M-x eshell' to invoke it.
2147 It functions similarly to bash and zsh, and allows running of Lisp
2148 functions and external commands using the same syntax. It supports
2149 history lists, aliases, extended globbing, smart scrolling, etc. It
2150 will work on any platform Emacs has been ported to. And since most of
2151 the basic commands -- ls, rm, mv, cp, ln, du, cat, etc. -- have been
2152 rewritten in Lisp, it offers an operating-system independent shell,
2153 all within the scope of your Emacs process.
2155 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
2156 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
2157 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
2158 on certain projects.
2160 *** The new package hi-lock.el provides commands to highlight matches
2161 of interactively entered regexps. For example,
2163 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
2165 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
2166 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
2167 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
2168 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
2169 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
2170 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
2171 corresponding file is read. There are commands to highlight matches
2172 to phrases and to highlight entire lines containing a match.
2174 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
2177 *** The new package tildify.el allows to add hard spaces or other text
2178 fragments in accordance with the current major mode.
2180 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
2181 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
2183 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
2184 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
2185 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
2186 `comment-region' now doesn't always comment a-line-at-a-time, but only
2187 comments the region, breaking the line at point if necessary.
2189 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
2190 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
2191 separate Texinfo file.
2193 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
2194 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
2195 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
2196 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
2197 enter check-in log messages.
2199 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
2200 without invoking external programs.
2202 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
2203 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
2204 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
2205 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
2206 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
2208 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
2209 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
2211 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
2212 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
2214 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
2215 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
2216 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
2217 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
2218 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
2221 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
2222 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
2223 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
2224 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
2226 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
2227 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
2228 actually modifying content of a buffer.
2230 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
2233 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
2235 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
2237 ; comment (until end of line)
2241 $A default non-terminal
2242 $"C" default terminal
2243 $?C? default special
2244 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
2245 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
2246 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
2247 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
2248 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
2249 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
2250 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
2251 C+ one or more occurrences of C
2252 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
2253 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
2254 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
2255 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
2256 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
2257 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
2258 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
2260 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
2262 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
2263 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
2264 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
2265 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
2266 equal signs of assignments.
2268 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
2269 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
2271 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
2272 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
2273 buffer menu with this package. See the Custom group `bs'.
2275 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
2277 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
2278 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
2279 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
2280 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
2281 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
2282 which answers different needs.
2284 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
2285 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
2286 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
2287 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
2288 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
2291 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
2292 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
2294 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
2296 *** hl-line.el provides `hl-line-mode', a minor mode to highlight the
2297 current line in the current buffer. It also provides
2298 `global-hl-line-mode' to provide the same behaviour in all buffers.
2300 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
2302 Please note: if `ansi-color-for-comint-mode' and
2303 `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will
2304 disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to
2305 `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This
2306 displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground
2307 and background colors.
2309 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
2312 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
2315 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
2317 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
2319 *** whitespace.el is a package for warning about and cleaning bogus
2320 whitespace in a file.
2322 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
2323 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
2324 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
2325 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
2326 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
2327 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
2328 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
2330 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
2332 Here is an example of columns:
2335 dog pineapple car EXTRA
2336 porcupine strawberry airplane
2338 Doing the following settings:
2340 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
2341 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
2342 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
2343 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
2346 Selecting the lines above and typing:
2348 M-x delimit-columns-region
2352 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
2353 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
2354 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
2356 delim-col has the following options:
2358 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
2361 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
2362 between each column.
2364 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
2367 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
2370 delim-col has the following commands:
2372 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
2373 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
2375 *** Recentf mode maintains a menu for visiting files that were
2376 operated on recently. User option recentf-menu-filter specifies a
2377 menu filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the
2378 recent file list can be displayed:
2380 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
2381 - sorted by file paths, file names, ascending or descending.
2382 - showing paths relative to the current default-directory
2384 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
2385 dynamically change the menu appearance.
2387 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
2390 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
2391 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
2392 specific to Message mode.
2394 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
2395 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
2396 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
2398 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
2399 interface to access directory servers using different directory
2400 protocols. It has a separate manual.
2402 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
2403 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
2405 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
2407 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
2408 minibuffer with completion.
2410 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
2411 with the diary features.
2413 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
2414 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
2416 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
2419 *** pcomplete.el is a library that provides programmable completion
2420 facilities for Emacs, similar to what zsh and tcsh offer. The main
2421 difference is that completion functions are written in Lisp, meaning
2422 they can be profiled, debugged, etc.
2424 *** antlr-mode is a new major mode for editing ANTLR grammar files.
2425 It is automatically turned on for files whose names have the extension
2428 ** Changes in sort.el
2430 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
2431 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
2432 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
2435 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
2437 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
2438 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
2439 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
2441 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
2442 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
2444 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
2445 output ^M at the end of lines.
2447 ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor
2448 mode `iswitchb-mode'.
2450 ** Just loading the msb package doesn't switch on Msb mode anymore.
2451 If you have `(require 'msb)' in your .emacs, please replace it with
2454 ** Flyspell mode has various new options. See the `flyspell' Custom
2457 ** The user option `backward-delete-char-untabify-method' controls the
2458 behavior of `backward-delete-char-untabify'. The following values
2461 `untabify' -- turn a tab to many spaces, then delete one space;
2462 `hungry' -- delete all whitespace, both tabs and spaces;
2463 `all' -- delete all whitespace, including tabs, spaces and newlines;
2464 nil -- just delete one character.
2466 Default value is `untabify'.
2468 [This change was made in Emacs 20.3 but not mentioned then.]
2470 ** In Cperl mode `cperl-invalid-face' should now be a normal face
2471 symbol, not double-quoted.
2473 ** Some packages are declared obsolete, to be removed in a future
2474 version. They are: auto-show, c-mode, hilit19, hscroll, ooutline,
2475 profile, rnews, rnewspost, and sc. Their implementations have been
2476 moved to lisp/obsolete.
2478 ** auto-compression mode is no longer enabled just by loading jka-compr.el.
2479 To control it, set `auto-compression-mode' via Custom or use the
2480 `auto-compression-mode' command.
2482 ** `browse-url-gnome-moz' is a new option for
2483 `browse-url-browser-function', invoking Mozilla in GNOME, and
2484 `browse-url-kde' can be chosen for invoking the KDE browser.
2486 ** The user-option `browse-url-new-window-p' has been renamed to
2487 `browse-url-new-window-flag'.
2489 ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now
2490 operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode.
2492 ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It
2493 is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia.
2495 ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM
2496 support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode,
2497 use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the
2498 buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands
2499 M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a
2500 new command M-x strokes-list-strokes.
2502 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
2503 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
2505 ** Hexl mode allows to insert non-ASCII characters.
2507 The non-ASCII characters are encoded using the same encoding as the
2508 file you are visiting in Hexl mode.
2510 ** Shell script mode changes.
2512 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
2513 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizable, and
2514 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
2518 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
2520 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
2521 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
2522 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
2523 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
2524 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
2526 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
2527 declarations when given the --declarations option.
2529 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
2530 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
2532 *** You shouldn't generally need any more the -C or -c++ option: etags
2533 automatically switches to C++ parsing when it meets the `class' or
2534 `template' keywords.
2536 *** Etags now is able to delve at arbitrary deeps into nested structures in
2537 C-like languages. Previously, it was limited to one or two brace levels.
2539 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
2542 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
2544 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
2546 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
2549 *** In makefiles, tags the targets.
2551 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
2552 variables are tagged.
2554 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
2556 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
2559 ** Changes in etags.el
2561 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
2562 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
2563 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
2565 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
2566 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
2568 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
2569 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
2570 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
2571 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
2573 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
2575 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
2576 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
2578 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
2580 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
2581 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
2582 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
2584 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
2585 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
2587 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
2588 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
2590 *** You can now search for tags that are part of the filename itself.
2591 If you have tagged the files topfile.c subdir/subfile.c
2592 /tmp/tempfile.c, you can now search for tags "topfile.c", "subfile.c",
2593 "dir/sub", "tempfile", "tempfile.c". If the tag matches the file name,
2594 point will go to the beginning of the file.
2596 *** Compressed files are now transparently supported if
2597 auto-compression-mode is active. You can tag (with Etags) and search
2598 (with find-tag) both compressed and uncompressed files.
2600 *** Tags commands like M-x tags-search no longer change point
2601 in buffers where no match is found. In buffers where a match is
2602 found, the original value of point is pushed on the marker ring.
2604 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
2605 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
2606 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
2608 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
2610 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
2612 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps'
2613 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
2614 expression from that list, are not checked.
2616 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
2617 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
2618 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
2619 the buffer, just like for the local files.
2621 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
2623 ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now
2624 displays local abbrevs, only.
2626 ** Refill minor mode provides preliminary support for keeping
2627 paragraphs filled as you modify them.
2629 ** The variable `double-click-fuzz' specifies how much the mouse
2630 may be moved between clicks that are recognized as a pair. Its value
2631 is measured in pixels.
2633 ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files
2634 to be visited as images.
2636 ** Two new user-options `grep-command' and `grep-find-command'
2637 were added to compile.el.
2639 ** Withdrawn packages
2641 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
2642 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
2644 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
2646 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
2649 * Incompatible Lisp changes
2651 There are a few Lisp changes which are not backwards-compatible and
2652 may require changes to existing code. Here is a list for reference.
2653 See the sections below for details.
2655 ** Since `format' preserves text properties, the idiom
2656 `(format "%s" foo)' no longer works to copy and remove properties.
2657 Use `copy-sequence' to copy the string, then use `set-text-properties'
2658 to remove the properties of the copy.
2660 ** Since the `keymap' text property now has significance, some code
2661 which uses both `local-map' and `keymap' properties (for portability)
2662 may, for instance, give rise to duplicate menus when the keymaps from
2663 these properties are active.
2665 ** The change in the treatment of non-ASCII characters in search
2666 ranges may affect some code.
2668 ** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook
2669 buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might
2670 make a difference to some code.
2672 ** The new treatment of the minibuffer prompt might affect code which
2673 operates on the minibuffer.
2675 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
2676 cause `no-conversion' and `emacs-mule-unix' coding systems to produce
2677 different results when reading files with non-ASCII characters
2678 (previously, both coding systems would produce the same results).
2679 Specifically, `no-conversion' interprets each 8-bit byte as a separate
2680 character. This makes `no-conversion' inappropriate for reading
2681 multibyte text, e.g. buffers written to disk in their internal MULE
2682 encoding (auto-saving does that, for example). If a Lisp program
2683 reads such files with `no-conversion', each byte of the multibyte
2684 sequence, including the MULE leading codes such as \201, is treated as
2685 a separate character, which prevents them from being interpreted in
2686 the buffer as multibyte characters.
2688 Therefore, Lisp programs that read files which contain the internal
2689 MULE encoding should use `emacs-mule-unix'. `no-conversion' is only
2690 appropriate for reading truly binary files.
2692 ** Code that relies on the obsolete `before-change-function' and
2693 `after-change-function' to detect buffer changes will now fail. Use
2694 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead.
2696 ** Code that uses `concat' with integer args now gets an error, as
2699 ** The function base64-decode-string now always returns a unibyte
2702 ** Not a Lisp incompatibility as such but, with the introduction of
2703 extra private charsets, there is now only one slot free for a new
2704 dimension-2 private charset. User code which tries to add more than
2705 one extra will fail unless you rebuild Emacs with some standard
2706 charset(s) removed; that is probably inadvisable because it changes
2707 the emacs-mule encoding. Also, files stored in the emacs-mule
2708 encoding using Emacs 20 with additional private charsets defined will
2709 probably not be read correctly by Emacs 21.
2711 ** The variable `directory-sep-char' is slated for removal.
2712 Not really a change (yet), but a projected one that you should be
2713 aware of: The variable `directory-sep-char' is deprecated, and should
2714 not be used. It was always ignored on GNU/Linux and Unix systems and
2715 on MS-DOS, but the MS-Windows port tried to support it by adapting the
2716 behavior of certain primitives to the value of this variable. It
2717 turned out that such support cannot be reliable, so it was decided to
2718 remove this variable in the near future. Lisp programs are well
2719 advised not to set it to anything but '/', because any different value
2720 will not have any effect when support for this variable is removed.
2723 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
2724 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
2726 ** Function assq-delete-all replaces function assoc-delete-all.
2728 ** The new function animate-string, from lisp/play/animate.el
2729 allows the animated display of strings.
2731 ** The new function `interactive-form' can be used to obtain the
2732 interactive form of a function.
2734 ** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
2735 between custom options. Example:
2737 (defcustom default-input-method nil
2738 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
2739 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
2740 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
2742 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
2743 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
2745 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
2746 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
2747 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
2749 ** The new hook `kbd-macro-termination-hook' is run at the end of
2750 function execute-kbd-macro. Functions on this hook are called with no
2751 args. The hook is run independent of how the macro was terminated
2752 (signal or normal termination).
2754 ** Functions `butlast' and `nbutlast' for removing trailing elements
2755 from a list are now available without requiring the CL package.
2757 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
2758 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
2760 ** The user-option `face-font-registry-alternatives' specifies
2761 alternative font registry names to try when looking for a font.
2763 ** Function `md5' calculates the MD5 "message digest"/"checksum".
2765 ** Function `delete-frame' runs `delete-frame-hook' before actually
2766 deleting the frame. The hook is called with one arg, the frame
2769 ** `add-hook' now makes the hook local if called with a non-nil LOCAL arg.
2771 ** The treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges has changed.
2772 If a range in a regular expression or the arg of
2773 skip-chars-forward/backward starts with a unibyte character C and ends
2774 with a multibyte character C2, the range is divided into two: one is
2775 C..?\377, the other is C1..C2, where C1 is the first character of C2's
2778 ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in
2779 the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the
2782 ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an
2783 expression with auto-compression-mode enabled.
2785 ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced
2786 with the more general `:mask' property.
2788 ** Image specifications accept more `:conversion's.
2790 ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a
2793 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
2794 is running in batch mode. For example,
2796 (message "%s" (read t))
2798 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
2801 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
2802 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
2804 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
2805 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
2808 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
2811 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
2813 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurrences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
2814 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
2816 - Function: remq ELT LIST
2818 Return a copy of LIST with all occurrences of ELT removed. The
2819 comparison is done with `eq'.
2821 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
2823 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
2824 has been changed: WEAK can now have new values `key-or-value' and
2825 `key-and-value', in addition the `nil', `key', `value', and `t'.
2827 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
2828 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
2829 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
2831 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
2832 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
2834 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
2835 function was declared obsolete.
2837 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
2838 retained as an alias).
2840 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
2841 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
2842 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
2844 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
2846 - Function: window-list &optional FRAME WINDOW MINIBUF
2848 Return a list of windows on FRAME, starting with WINDOW. FRAME nil or
2849 omitted means use the selected frame. WINDOW nil or omitted means use
2850 the selected window. MINIBUF t means include the minibuffer window,
2851 even if it isn't active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means include the
2852 minibuffer window only if it's active. MINIBUF neither nil nor t
2853 means never include the minibuffer window.
2855 ** There's a new function `get-window-with-predicate' defined as follows
2857 - Function: get-window-with-predicate PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
2859 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
2861 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
2862 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
2863 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
2864 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
2867 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
2868 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
2869 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
2870 minibuffer even if it is active.
2872 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
2873 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
2874 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
2875 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
2876 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
2877 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
2879 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
2880 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
2881 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
2882 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
2883 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
2884 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
2885 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
2887 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
2888 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
2889 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
2891 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
2892 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
2893 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
2894 Default value is nil.
2896 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
2899 ** The new user option `line-number-display-limit-width' controls
2900 the maximum width of lines in a buffer for which Emacs displays line
2901 numbers in the mode line. The default is 200.
2903 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
2904 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
2905 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
2907 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information about the argument
2908 list of a primitive.
2910 ** `where-is-internal' now also accepts a list of keymaps.
2912 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
2913 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
2914 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
2915 than replacing the local map.
2917 ** The obsolete variables `before-change-function' and
2918 `after-change-function' are no longer acted upon and have been
2919 removed. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions'
2922 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
2924 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments,
2925 as promised long ago.
2927 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
2929 ** The new variable auto-coding-regexp-alist specifies coding systems
2930 for reading specific files, analogous to auto-coding-alist, but
2931 patterns are checked against file contents instead of file names.
2934 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
2936 ** The new package rx.el provides an alternative sexp notation for
2937 regular expressions.
2939 - Function: rx-to-string SEXP
2941 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
2945 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
2947 The following are valid subforms of regular expressions in sexp
2951 matches string STRING literally.
2954 matches character CHAR literally.
2957 matches any character except a newline.
2960 matches any character
2963 matches any character in SET. SET may be a character or string.
2964 Ranges of characters can be specified as `A-Z' in strings.
2970 matches any character not in SET
2973 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a line
2974 in the text being matched
2977 is similar to `line-start' but matches only at the end of a line
2980 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
2981 string being matched against.
2984 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
2985 string being matched against.
2988 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
2989 buffer being matched against.
2992 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
2993 buffer being matched against.
2996 matches the empty string, but only at point.
2999 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
3003 matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word.
3006 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
3009 `(not word-boundary)'
3010 matches the empty string, but not at the beginning or end of a
3014 matches 0 through 9.
3017 matches ASCII control characters.
3020 matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
3023 matches space and tab only.
3026 matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
3030 matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
3034 matches letters and digits. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3035 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
3038 matches letters. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3039 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
3042 matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
3045 matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
3048 matches anything lower-case.
3051 matches anything upper-case.
3054 matches punctuation. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3055 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
3058 matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
3061 matches anything that has word syntax.
3064 matches a character with syntax SYNTAX. SYNTAX must be one
3065 of the following symbols.
3067 `whitespace' (\\s- in string notation)
3068 `punctuation' (\\s.)
3071 `open-parenthesis' (\\s()
3072 `close-parenthesis' (\\s))
3073 `expression-prefix' (\\s')
3074 `string-quote' (\\s\")
3075 `paired-delimiter' (\\s$)
3077 `character-quote' (\\s/)
3078 `comment-start' (\\s<)
3079 `comment-end' (\\s>)
3081 `(not (syntax SYNTAX))'
3082 matches a character that has not syntax SYNTAX.
3084 `(category CATEGORY)'
3085 matches a character with category CATEGORY. CATEGORY must be
3086 either a character to use for C, or one of the following symbols.
3088 `consonant' (\\c0 in string notation)
3090 `upper-diacritical-mark' (\\c2)
3091 `lower-diacritical-mark' (\\c3)
3095 `vowel-modifying-diacritical-mark' (\\c7)
3097 `semivowel-lower' (\\c9)
3098 `not-at-end-of-line' (\\c<)
3099 `not-at-beginning-of-line' (\\c>)
3100 `alpha-numeric-two-byte' (\\cA)
3101 `chinse-two-byte' (\\cC)
3102 `greek-two-byte' (\\cG)
3103 `japanese-hiragana-two-byte' (\\cH)
3104 `indian-tow-byte' (\\cI)
3105 `japanese-katakana-two-byte' (\\cK)
3106 `korean-hangul-two-byte' (\\cN)
3107 `cyrillic-two-byte' (\\cY)
3116 `japanese-katakana' (\\ck)
3120 `japanese-roman' (\\cr)
3127 `(not (category CATEGORY))'
3128 matches a character that has not category CATEGORY.
3130 `(and SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
3131 matches what SEXP1 matches, followed by what SEXP2 matches, etc.
3133 `(submatch SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
3134 like `and', but makes the match accessible with `match-end',
3135 `match-beginning', and `match-string'.
3137 `(group SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
3138 another name for `submatch'.
3140 `(or SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
3141 matches anything that matches SEXP1 or SEXP2, etc. If all
3142 args are strings, use `regexp-opt' to optimize the resulting
3145 `(minimal-match SEXP)'
3146 produce a non-greedy regexp for SEXP. Normally, regexps matching
3147 zero or more occurrances of something are \"greedy\" in that they
3148 match as much as they can, as long as the overall regexp can
3149 still match. A non-greedy regexp matches as little as possible.
3151 `(maximal-match SEXP)'
3152 produce a greedy regexp for SEXP. This is the default.
3154 `(zero-or-more SEXP)'
3155 matches zero or more occurrences of what SEXP matches.
3158 like `zero-or-more'.
3161 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
3164 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
3166 `(one-or-more SEXP)'
3167 matches one or more occurrences of A.
3173 like `one-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
3176 like `one-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
3178 `(zero-or-one SEXP)'
3179 matches zero or one occurrences of A.
3185 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a greedy regexp.
3188 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
3191 matches N occurrences of what SEXP matches.
3194 matches N to M occurrences of what SEXP matches.
3197 evaluate FORM and insert result. If result is a string,
3201 include REGEXP in string notation in the result.
3203 *** The features `md5' and `overlay' are now provided by default.
3205 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
3206 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
3207 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
3208 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
3210 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
3211 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
3212 when they find 8-bit characters. Previously, they included `ascii' in a
3213 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
3215 *** The functions `set-buffer-multibyte', `string-as-multibyte' and
3216 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer or a string
3217 if it contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
3219 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
3220 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
3221 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
3222 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
3223 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
3224 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
3225 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
3228 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
3230 A fontset can now be specified for each independent character, for
3231 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
3232 character set as previously.
3234 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
3235 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
3236 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
3238 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
3239 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
3240 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
3241 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
3243 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
3244 name of a font and REGISTRY is a registry name of a font.
3246 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
3247 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
3250 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
3251 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
3253 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
3254 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
3255 buffers and strings.
3257 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
3258 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
3259 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
3260 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
3261 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
3262 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
3263 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
3266 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
3267 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
3268 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
3270 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
3271 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
3272 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
3273 may differ between buffer and string text.
3275 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
3276 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
3278 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
3279 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
3280 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
3281 `composition' from STRING.
3283 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
3284 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
3286 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
3289 ** The new coding system `mac-roman' is primarily intended for use on
3290 the Macintosh but may be used generally for Macintosh-encoded text.
3292 ** The new character sets `mule-unicode-0100-24ff',
3293 `mule-unicode-2500-33ff', and `mule-unicode-e000-ffff' have been
3294 introduced for Unicode characters in the range U+0100..U+24FF,
3295 U+2500..U+33FF, U+E000..U+FFFF respectively.
3297 Note that the character sets are not yet unified in Emacs, so
3298 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
3299 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
3300 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
3301 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
3302 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system.
3304 ** The new coding system `mule-utf-8' has been added.
3305 It provides limited support for decoding/encoding UTF-8 text. For
3306 details, please see the documentation string of this coding system.
3308 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
3309 `japanese-jisx0213-2' have been introduced for the new Japanese
3310 standard JIS X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
3312 ** The new character sets `latin-iso8859-14' and `latin-iso8859-15'
3313 have been introduced.
3315 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
3316 have been introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
3317 0xA0..0xFF respectively. Note that the multibyte representation of
3318 eight-bit-control is never exposed; this leads to an exception in the
3319 emacs-mule coding system, which encodes everything else to the
3320 buffer/string internal representation. Note that to search for
3321 eight-bit-graphic characters in a multibyte buffer, the search string
3322 must be multibyte, otherwise such characters will be converted to
3323 their multibyte equivalent.
3325 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
3326 that offset in the file before writing.
3328 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
3329 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
3331 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
3332 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
3333 from which the command was issued.
3335 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
3336 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
3337 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
3338 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
3341 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
3342 to `window-buffer-height'.
3344 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
3346 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
3347 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
3348 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
3350 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
3353 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optional third argument
3354 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
3356 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
3357 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
3358 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
3360 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
3361 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
3362 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
3363 is currently displayed in some window.
3365 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
3366 argument function's results.
3368 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
3369 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails. Also,
3370 `base64-decode-string' now always returns a unibyte string (in Emacs
3371 20, it returned a multibyte string when the result was a valid multibyte
3374 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
3375 header in the list of headers passed to it.
3377 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
3378 ignores differences in case and text representation.
3380 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
3381 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
3384 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
3385 nil don't display a cursor
3386 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
3387 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
3388 others display a box cursor.
3390 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
3391 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
3392 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
3393 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
3395 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
3396 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
3397 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
3398 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
3402 (string-to-syntax "()")
3405 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
3408 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
3409 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
3416 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
3421 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
3426 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
3433 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
3434 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
3437 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
3438 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
3439 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
3440 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
3442 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
3444 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
3445 for a regexp in a string.
3447 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
3448 `mouse-position-function'.
3450 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
3451 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
3453 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
3454 Keywords are now always considered constants.
3456 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
3459 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
3460 returned by function `recent-keys'.
3462 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
3463 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
3464 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding C-M-a
3465 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
3468 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
3469 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
3471 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
3472 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
3473 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
3474 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
3477 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
3478 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
3479 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
3480 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
3482 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
3483 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
3484 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
3486 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
3487 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
3490 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
3492 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
3493 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
3494 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
3497 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
3498 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
3499 Also back-references like \2 are now considered as an error if the
3500 corresponding subgroup does not exist (or is not closed yet).
3501 Previously it would have been silently turned into `2' (ignoring the `\').
3503 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
3504 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
3506 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
3507 instead of being optional.
3509 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
3510 modify read-only text.
3512 ** New functions and variables for locales.
3514 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
3515 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
3516 time functions like strftime. The new variables
3517 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
3518 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
3520 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
3521 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
3522 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
3523 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
3524 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
3525 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
3526 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
3528 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
3529 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
3530 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
3533 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
3534 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
3536 ** New function `propertize'
3538 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
3539 strings with text properties.
3541 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
3543 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
3544 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
3545 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
3546 specified value of that property. Example:
3548 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
3550 ** push and pop macros.
3552 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
3553 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
3554 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
3556 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
3557 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
3558 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
3560 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
3562 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
3563 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
3565 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
3566 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
3567 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
3568 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
3570 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
3571 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
3572 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
3573 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
3575 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such as
3576 [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on. These must be used within a character
3577 class--for instance, [-[:digit:].+] matches digits or a period
3580 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
3581 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
3582 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
3583 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
3584 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
3586 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
3588 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
3589 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3590 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
3591 [:alpha:] matches letters.
3592 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3593 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
3594 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
3595 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
3596 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
3597 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
3598 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
3599 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
3600 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
3601 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
3602 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
3604 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
3606 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
3608 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
3610 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
3611 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
3615 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
3616 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
3617 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
3621 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
3622 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
3624 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
3626 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
3627 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
3628 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
3629 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
3630 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
3632 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
3634 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
3635 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
3636 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
3640 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
3641 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
3642 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
3643 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
3644 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
3646 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
3648 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
3650 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
3652 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
3654 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
3656 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
3659 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
3661 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
3663 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
3665 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
3667 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
3669 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
3671 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
3673 Returns the size of TABLE.
3675 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
3677 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
3679 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
3681 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
3683 - Function: clrhash TABLE
3687 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
3689 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
3692 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
3694 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
3695 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
3697 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
3699 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
3701 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
3703 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
3704 arguments KEY and VALUE.
3706 - Function: sxhash OBJ
3708 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
3710 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
3712 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
3713 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
3714 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
3715 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
3716 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
3718 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
3720 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
3721 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
3722 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
3724 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
3725 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
3727 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
3728 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
3730 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
3731 (sxhash (upcase a)))
3733 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
3734 'case-fold-string-hash))
3736 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
3738 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
3740 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
3741 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
3742 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
3744 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
3746 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
3747 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
3749 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
3750 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
3751 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
3752 is too short to reach that column.
3754 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
3755 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
3756 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
3757 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
3759 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
3760 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
3761 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
3763 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
3764 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
3766 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
3767 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
3769 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
3770 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
3771 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
3772 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
3773 temporary-file-directory instead.
3775 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
3776 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
3777 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
3778 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
3780 ** assq-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
3781 elements of an alist which have a car `eq' to a particular value.
3783 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
3785 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
3786 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
3787 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
3789 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
3791 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
3792 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
3793 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
3794 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
3795 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
3796 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
3798 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
3799 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
3800 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
3801 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
3803 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
3805 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
3806 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
3807 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
3810 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
3811 string where arguments appear in the result string.
3815 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
3817 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
3818 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
3821 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
3823 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
3825 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
3826 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
3829 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
3831 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
3832 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
3837 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
3838 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
3840 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
3841 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
3842 to enable sound support.
3844 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
3845 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
3846 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
3847 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
3848 sound to play, before playing the sound.
3850 The following sound properties are supported:
3854 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
3855 searched relative to `data-directory'.
3859 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
3860 may be present, but not both.
3864 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
3865 0..1. This property is optional.
3869 DEVICE is a string specifying the system device on which to play the
3870 sound. The default device is system-dependent.
3872 Other properties are ignored.
3874 An alternative interface is called as
3875 (play-sound-file FILE &optional VOLUME DEVICE).
3877 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
3879 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
3882 ** Changes to garbage collection
3884 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
3885 of live and free strings.
3887 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
3888 strings that have been consed so far.
3891 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
3894 ** The user-option `resize-mini-windows' controls how Emacs resizes
3897 ** The function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now has a third optional
3898 argument, PARTIALLY. If a character is only partially visible, nil is
3899 returned, unless PARTIALLY is non-nil.
3901 ** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used.
3903 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
3905 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
3908 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
3910 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
3912 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
3913 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
3914 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
3915 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
3916 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
3918 ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image
3921 - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME
3923 Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap.
3924 FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil
3925 or omitted means use the selected frame.
3927 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
3928 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
3930 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
3933 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see
3937 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
3939 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
3940 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
3942 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
3943 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
3944 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
3945 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
3946 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
3947 just display it black instead.
3949 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
3952 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
3956 ** New face implementation.
3958 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
3959 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
3963 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
3965 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
3967 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
3968 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
3970 3. Font height in 1/10pt
3972 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
3974 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
3976 6. Foreground color.
3978 7. Background color.
3980 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
3982 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
3984 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
3986 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
3988 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
3991 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
3992 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
3994 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
3995 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
3996 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
3997 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
3998 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each of the face
3999 attributes mentioned above.
4001 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
4002 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
4005 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
4006 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
4011 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
4012 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
4013 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
4014 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
4015 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
4016 results in a fully-specified face.
4018 *** Face realization.
4020 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
4021 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
4022 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
4023 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
4024 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
4025 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
4027 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
4028 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
4029 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
4030 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
4032 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
4033 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
4034 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
4035 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
4036 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
4038 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
4039 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
4040 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
4041 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
4042 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
4045 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
4046 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
4047 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
4048 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
4050 **** Clearing face caches.
4052 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
4053 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
4058 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
4059 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
4060 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
4062 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
4063 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
4064 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
4065 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
4066 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
4068 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
4069 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
4070 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
4072 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
4074 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
4075 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
4076 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
4077 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
4078 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
4079 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
4080 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
4082 Setting `face-font-family-alternatives' allows the user to specify
4083 alternative font families to try if a family specified by a face
4086 Setting `face-font-registry-alternatives' allows the user to specify
4087 all alternative font registry names to try for a face specifying a
4090 Please note that the interpretations of the above two variables are
4093 Setting face-ignored-fonts allows the user to ignore specific fonts.
4098 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
4099 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
4102 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
4103 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
4104 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
4105 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
4106 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
4109 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
4111 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
4113 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
4115 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
4117 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
4118 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
4119 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
4121 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
4122 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
4123 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
4124 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
4125 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
4126 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
4127 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
4128 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
4129 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
4130 of the face font sort order.
4132 - Function: x-font-family-list
4134 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
4135 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
4136 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
4137 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
4139 - Variable: font-list-limit
4141 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
4142 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
4143 matching font. The default is currently 100.
4145 *** Setting face attributes.
4147 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
4148 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
4149 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
4152 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
4153 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
4155 The following attributes are recognized:
4159 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
4160 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
4161 and `?' are allowed.
4165 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
4166 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
4167 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
4168 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
4172 VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use
4173 in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to
4174 scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old
4175 height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height.
4179 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
4180 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
4181 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
4185 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
4186 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
4189 `:foreground', `:background'
4191 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
4195 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
4196 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
4197 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
4202 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
4203 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
4204 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
4209 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
4210 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
4211 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
4212 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
4216 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
4217 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
4218 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
4219 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
4220 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
4221 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
4222 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
4223 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
4224 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
4225 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
4226 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
4227 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
4228 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
4229 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
4230 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
4231 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
4236 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
4237 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
4241 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
4242 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
4243 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
4244 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
4245 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
4246 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
4248 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
4249 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
4253 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
4254 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
4255 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
4258 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
4259 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
4260 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
4262 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
4267 VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list
4268 of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face
4269 like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces.
4271 *** Face attributes and X resources
4273 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
4276 Face attribute X resource class
4277 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
4278 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
4279 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
4280 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
4281 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
4282 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
4283 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
4284 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
4285 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
4286 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
4287 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
4288 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
4289 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
4290 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
4291 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
4292 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
4293 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
4294 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
4295 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
4296 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
4298 *** Text property `face'.
4300 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
4301 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
4302 specification can be
4304 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
4306 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
4307 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
4308 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
4309 for face attribute names.
4311 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
4312 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
4313 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
4315 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
4317 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
4318 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
4319 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
4320 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
4321 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
4322 used to clear the mapping table.
4324 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
4326 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
4327 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
4328 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
4329 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
4330 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
4331 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
4332 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
4333 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
4334 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
4335 modify their color-related behavior.
4337 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
4340 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
4342 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
4343 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
4344 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
4345 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
4346 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
4347 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
4348 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
4349 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
4350 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
4352 The new function `display-images-p' returns non-nil if a particular
4353 display can display image files.
4355 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
4357 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
4358 To disallow this completely (like previous versions of emacs), customize
4359 the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', and turn on the
4360 `Inviolable' option.
4362 The function minibuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
4363 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
4364 Otherwise, it returns zero.
4366 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
4368 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
4369 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
4370 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
4372 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
4373 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
4374 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
4375 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
4376 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
4377 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
4378 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
4381 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
4382 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
4383 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
4385 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
4387 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
4389 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
4391 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4392 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
4393 constrained position if that is different.
4395 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
4396 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
4397 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
4398 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
4399 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
4400 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
4401 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
4402 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
4403 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
4405 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
4406 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
4407 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
4408 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
4409 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
4411 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
4412 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
4414 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
4416 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
4418 Delete the field surrounding POS.
4419 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4420 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4422 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
4424 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
4425 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4426 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4427 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
4428 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
4430 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
4432 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
4433 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4434 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4435 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
4436 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
4438 - Function: field-string &optional POS
4440 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
4441 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4442 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4444 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
4446 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
4447 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
4448 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
4452 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
4453 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
4454 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
4455 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
4457 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
4458 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
4459 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
4460 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
4463 IMAGE is an image specification.
4465 *** Image specifications
4467 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
4468 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
4469 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
4470 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
4471 described below are ignored.
4473 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
4477 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
4478 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
4479 to use for its ascent.
4481 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
4482 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
4484 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
4485 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
4486 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
4487 overlays that apply to the image.
4491 MARGIN must be either a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put
4492 as margin around the image, or a pair (X . Y) with X specifying the
4493 horizontal margin and Y specifying the vertical margin. Default is 0.
4497 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
4502 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it.
4504 ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss''
4505 edge-detection algorithm to the image.
4507 ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means
4508 apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a
4509 nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at
4510 position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels
4511 around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the
4512 neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the
4513 transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at
4514 x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown
4517 (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1
4519 x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1)
4521 The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color
4522 resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels,
4523 multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum
4524 of the factors' absolute values.
4526 Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of
4532 Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of
4538 ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks
4543 If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for
4544 the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the
4545 image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the
4546 background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the
4547 image, assuming the most frequently occurring color from the corners is
4548 the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED
4549 GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the
4552 If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images
4553 in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying
4558 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
4559 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
4560 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
4561 may be present in the image specification.
4565 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
4566 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
4567 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
4568 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
4570 *** Supported image types
4572 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
4574 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
4575 properties supported are
4579 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4580 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground.
4584 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4585 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
4587 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
4588 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
4589 instead of a `:file' property.
4593 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
4597 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
4603 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
4604 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
4606 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
4608 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
4611 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
4612 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
4615 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
4617 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
4618 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
4619 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
4620 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
4622 Additional image properties supported are:
4624 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
4626 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
4627 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
4630 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
4631 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
4633 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
4634 to display compressed images.
4636 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
4638 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
4639 mono images are supported. Additional image properties supported for
4644 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4645 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground.
4649 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4650 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
4652 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
4654 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
4655 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
4658 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
4660 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
4661 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
4664 **** GIF, image type `gif'
4666 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
4667 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
4669 Additional image properties supported are:
4673 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
4674 multi-image GIF file. An error is signaled if INDEX is too large.
4676 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
4677 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
4678 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
4681 (defun show-anim (file max)
4682 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
4683 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
4685 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
4688 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
4691 (goto-char (point-min))
4692 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
4693 (insert-image img "x"))
4694 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
4696 **** PNG, image type `png'
4698 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
4699 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
4702 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
4704 Additional image properties supported are:
4708 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
4709 integer. This is a required property.
4713 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
4714 must be a integer. This is an required property.
4718 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
4719 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
4720 files. This is an required property.
4722 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
4727 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
4728 which are supported in the current configuration.
4730 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
4731 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
4732 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
4733 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
4734 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
4736 *** Simplified image API, image.el
4738 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
4739 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
4740 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
4741 define an image based on available image types. The functions
4742 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
4747 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
4750 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
4751 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
4752 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
4753 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
4754 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
4755 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
4756 of the display margins.
4758 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
4759 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
4760 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
4761 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
4766 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
4767 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
4768 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
4769 that have a `help-echo' property.
4771 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
4772 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
4773 the window in which the help was found.
4775 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
4776 `help-echo' text property was found.
4778 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
4779 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
4781 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
4782 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
4785 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
4786 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
4788 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
4789 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
4790 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
4791 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
4792 used as help string.
4794 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
4795 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
4796 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
4798 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
4800 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
4801 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
4803 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
4804 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
4805 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
4806 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
4809 (global-set-key [A-down]
4812 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4813 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
4814 (global-set-key [A-up]
4817 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4818 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
4820 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
4822 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
4823 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
4824 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
4825 is called with one argument, POS.
4827 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
4828 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
4829 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
4830 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
4831 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
4833 ** Tool bar support.
4835 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
4836 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
4837 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
4838 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
4839 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
4840 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
4842 *** Tool bar item definitions
4844 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
4845 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
4846 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
4848 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
4849 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
4850 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
4851 property (see below).
4853 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
4854 binding are currently ignored.
4856 The following properties are recognized:
4860 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
4865 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
4869 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
4870 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
4871 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
4873 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
4875 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
4876 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
4880 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
4881 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
4882 meaning of each of the four elements:
4884 Index Use when item is
4885 ----------------------------------------
4886 0 enabled and selected
4887 1 enabled and deselected
4888 2 disabled and selected
4889 3 disabled and deselected
4891 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
4892 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
4894 `:help HELP-STRING'.
4896 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
4897 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
4899 The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding
4900 toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used
4901 to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the
4904 The default bindings use a menu-item :filter to derive the tool-bar
4905 dynamically from variable `tool-bar-map' which may be set
4906 buffer-locally to override the global map.
4908 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
4910 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
4911 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
4912 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
4914 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
4915 raised when the mouse moves over them.
4917 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
4918 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
4919 pixels, or a pair of integers (X . Y) specifying horizontal and
4920 vertical margins . Default is 1.
4922 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
4923 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
4925 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
4927 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
4930 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
4931 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
4932 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
4934 is the original tool bar item definition, then
4936 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
4938 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
4941 ** Mode line changes.
4943 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
4945 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
4946 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
4947 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
4949 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
4950 a `local-map' text property.
4952 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
4953 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
4955 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
4956 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
4957 `local-map' property.
4959 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
4960 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
4963 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
4964 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
4966 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
4967 variable mode-line-format to nil.
4969 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
4971 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
4972 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
4973 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
4974 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
4977 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
4980 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
4981 position in the header-line.
4983 ** Text property `display'
4985 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text,
4986 replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is
4987 also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of
4988 the `display' property should be a display specification, as described
4989 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
4991 *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas
4993 To replace the text having the `display' property with some other
4994 text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'.
4996 If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left
4997 marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in
4998 the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING
4999 is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
5000 simpler form STRING as property value.
5002 *** Variable width and height spaces
5004 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
5005 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
5006 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
5007 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
5008 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
5009 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
5010 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
5012 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
5013 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
5014 properties described below.
5016 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
5017 characters having the `display' property.
5021 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
5022 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
5024 - :relative-width FACTOR
5026 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
5027 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
5028 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
5029 width of that character by FACTOR.
5033 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
5034 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
5036 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
5040 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
5043 - :relative-height FACTOR
5045 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
5046 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
5050 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
5051 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
5052 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
5055 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
5059 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
5060 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
5061 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
5062 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
5063 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
5064 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
5065 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
5066 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
5067 as display specification.
5069 *** Other display properties
5071 - (space-width FACTOR)
5073 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
5074 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
5079 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
5081 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
5082 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
5083 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
5084 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
5085 a font is available counts as a step.
5087 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
5088 as tall as the frame's default font.
5090 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
5091 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
5093 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
5094 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
5098 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
5099 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
5100 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
5101 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
5102 `height' subproperty.
5104 *** Conditional display properties
5106 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
5107 has the form `(when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC applies
5108 only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated. During the
5109 evaluation, `object' is bound to the string or buffer having the
5110 conditional display property; `position' and `buffer-position' are
5111 bound to the position within `object' and the buffer position where
5112 the display property was found, respectively. Both positions can be
5113 different when object is a string.
5115 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
5118 ** New menu separator types.
5120 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
5121 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
5122 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
5123 to specify other menu separator types.
5125 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
5127 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
5130 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
5132 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
5134 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
5136 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
5138 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
5140 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
5142 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
5144 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
5146 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
5148 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the form
5149 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
5151 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
5153 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
5155 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
5157 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
5159 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
5161 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
5163 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
5165 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
5167 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
5169 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
5171 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
5173 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
5175 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
5177 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
5179 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
5180 the corresponding single-line separators.
5182 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
5184 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
5185 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
5186 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
5187 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
5188 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
5189 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
5190 default foreground is black.
5192 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
5193 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
5194 `ScrollBarBackground').
5196 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
5197 settings for scroll bar colors.
5199 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
5200 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
5202 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
5203 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
5204 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
5205 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
5206 the original window start.
5208 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
5209 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
5210 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
5212 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
5214 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
5215 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
5216 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
5217 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
5219 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
5220 fixed-width and fixed-height.
5222 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
5224 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
5225 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
5226 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
5227 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
5228 temporarily to nil, for example
5230 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
5231 (enlarge-window 10))
5233 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
5234 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
5236 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
5237 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
5238 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
5239 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
5240 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
5241 support a vertical-bar cursor).
5245 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
5247 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
5250 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
5252 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
5254 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
5255 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
5256 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
5257 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
5258 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
5260 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
5264 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
5266 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
5270 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
5272 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
5273 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
5275 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
5277 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
5279 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
5280 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
5281 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
5283 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
5284 is the one that is used.
5286 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
5287 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
5288 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
5289 separate from the command's regular output.
5290 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
5291 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
5292 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
5295 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
5296 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
5297 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
5298 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
5300 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
5301 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
5302 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
5303 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
5305 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
5306 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
5307 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
5308 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
5310 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
5311 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
5312 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
5313 they never ignore case.
5315 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
5316 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
5317 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
5318 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
5319 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
5320 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
5321 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
5323 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
5324 the same format that was used in the file before.
5326 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
5327 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
5329 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
5330 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
5331 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
5333 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
5334 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
5335 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
5336 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
5337 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
5338 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
5339 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
5341 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
5342 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
5343 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
5344 format. You can now customize these variables.
5346 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
5347 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
5348 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
5349 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
5351 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
5352 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
5353 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
5355 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
5356 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
5357 doesn't have any effect.
5359 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
5362 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
5363 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
5364 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
5366 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
5367 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
5368 `auto-show-mode' command.
5370 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
5371 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
5372 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
5373 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
5374 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
5376 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
5377 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
5379 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
5380 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
5381 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
5383 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
5384 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
5385 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
5386 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
5388 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
5390 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
5391 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
5392 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
5393 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
5394 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
5396 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
5397 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
5399 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
5400 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
5401 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
5402 `?' on other systems.
5404 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
5405 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
5408 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
5409 current codepage when it starts.
5413 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
5414 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
5415 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
5416 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
5417 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
5418 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
5422 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
5423 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
5425 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
5426 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
5427 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
5428 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
5429 buffer-file-coding-system.
5431 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
5432 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
5435 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
5436 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
5437 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
5438 list of possible coding systems.
5442 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
5443 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
5444 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
5445 docstring for details.
5447 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
5448 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
5449 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
5450 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
5451 lineup functions use this feature currently.
5453 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
5454 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
5456 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
5457 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
5459 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
5460 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
5461 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
5462 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
5465 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
5466 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
5468 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
5469 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
5470 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
5471 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
5473 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
5474 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
5475 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
5476 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
5477 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
5479 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
5481 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
5483 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
5484 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
5486 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
5488 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
5489 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
5490 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
5491 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
5492 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
5496 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
5497 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
5498 Gnus manual for the full story.
5500 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
5501 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
5502 group, which is created automatically.
5504 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
5507 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
5509 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
5510 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
5512 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
5515 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
5517 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
5518 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
5520 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
5522 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
5523 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
5525 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
5526 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
5528 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
5529 control over simplification.
5531 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
5533 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
5536 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
5538 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
5540 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
5541 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
5542 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
5544 *** Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
5545 `a' forces normal posting method.
5547 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
5550 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
5553 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
5554 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
5556 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
5559 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
5561 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
5563 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
5564 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
5566 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
5567 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
5569 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
5571 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
5574 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
5575 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
5577 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
5578 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
5580 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
5582 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
5584 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
5586 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
5588 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
5589 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
5590 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
5592 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
5593 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
5594 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
5595 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
5596 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
5598 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
5599 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
5600 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
5601 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
5603 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
5604 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
5605 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
5608 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
5610 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
5611 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
5613 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
5614 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
5615 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
5616 removed from the label.
5618 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
5619 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
5621 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
5622 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
5624 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
5625 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
5628 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
5630 ** New/deleted modes and packages
5632 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
5633 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
5635 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
5636 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
5637 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
5639 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
5640 changes with a special face.
5642 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
5643 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
5644 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
5646 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
5648 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
5649 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
5650 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
5651 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
5652 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
5654 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
5655 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
5656 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
5658 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
5659 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
5660 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
5661 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
5662 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
5663 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
5664 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
5665 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
5666 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
5668 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
5669 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
5670 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
5671 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
5672 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
5675 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
5676 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
5677 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
5678 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
5679 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
5680 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
5682 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
5683 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
5684 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
5685 was not documented clearly before.
5687 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
5688 This includes Tetris and Snake.
5690 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
5692 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
5693 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
5694 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
5695 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
5697 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
5698 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
5699 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
5701 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
5703 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
5704 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
5706 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
5707 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
5710 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
5711 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
5712 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
5713 file names and attributes are returned.
5715 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
5716 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
5717 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its attributes.
5718 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
5721 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
5722 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
5724 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
5726 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
5727 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
5728 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
5731 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
5732 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
5735 The new function process-running-child-p
5736 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
5737 terminal to its own child process.
5739 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
5740 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
5741 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
5742 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
5744 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
5745 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
5747 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
5748 :included is an alias for :visible.
5750 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
5751 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
5752 to move or copy menu entries.
5754 ** Multibyte editing changes
5756 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
5757 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
5758 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
5759 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
5760 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
5761 (setq char (sref str idx)
5762 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
5763 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
5765 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
5766 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
5767 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
5769 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
5770 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
5771 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
5773 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibited
5775 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
5776 across the boundary.
5778 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
5779 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
5780 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
5781 contains 8-bit characters.
5782 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
5783 contains invalid characters.
5785 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
5786 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
5787 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
5788 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
5791 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
5792 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
5793 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
5794 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
5796 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
5797 compose Thai characters in a string.
5799 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
5800 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
5801 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
5802 menus should always use the third argument.
5804 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
5805 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
5806 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
5807 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
5809 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
5810 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
5811 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
5812 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
5814 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
5815 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
5816 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
5819 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
5821 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
5822 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
5823 requested feature cannot be loaded.
5825 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
5826 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
5827 means to clear out that attribute.
5829 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
5830 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
5832 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
5833 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
5834 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
5835 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
5837 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
5838 the gap of the current buffer.
5840 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
5841 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
5844 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
5845 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
5846 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
5847 it back in after any modifications have been made.
5849 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
5851 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
5852 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
5853 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
5854 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
5855 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
5857 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
5858 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
5859 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
5860 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
5861 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
5863 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
5864 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
5865 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
5867 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
5868 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
5869 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
5870 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
5871 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
5874 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
5875 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
5876 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
5877 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
5879 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
5881 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
5882 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
5883 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
5884 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
5886 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
5887 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
5888 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
5889 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
5890 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
5891 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
5892 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
5895 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
5898 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
5899 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
5900 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
5901 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
5902 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
5904 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
5905 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
5906 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
5907 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
5909 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
5910 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
5911 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
5912 something that most users not do.
5914 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
5915 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
5916 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
5919 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
5922 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
5923 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
5924 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
5925 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
5928 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
5929 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
5930 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
5931 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
5932 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
5935 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
5936 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
5937 to be confused by TeX commands.
5939 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
5940 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
5941 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
5942 of various alternative replacements and actions.
5944 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
5945 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
5946 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
5947 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
5948 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
5950 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
5951 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
5953 ** Changes in input method usage.
5955 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
5956 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
5959 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
5961 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
5962 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
5964 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
5965 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
5967 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
5969 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
5971 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
5972 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
5974 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
5975 given in the following case:
5976 o When you are using a complex input method.
5977 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
5979 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
5980 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
5981 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
5982 setting it to t is helpful.
5984 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
5986 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
5988 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
5989 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
5990 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
5991 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
5994 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
5995 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
5996 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
5999 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
6001 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
6003 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
6004 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
6006 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
6007 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
6008 its owner and group.
6010 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
6011 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
6013 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
6014 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
6016 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
6017 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
6018 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
6019 by the left edge of the rectangle.
6021 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
6022 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
6023 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
6024 for writing keyboard macros.
6026 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
6027 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
6028 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
6029 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
6030 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
6033 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
6035 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
6036 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
6039 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
6040 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
6041 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
6042 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
6044 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
6045 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
6046 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
6048 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
6049 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
6050 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
6051 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
6053 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
6054 failure if the command produces no output.
6056 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
6057 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
6060 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
6061 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
6062 function and variable names.
6064 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
6065 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
6066 file-coding-system-alist.
6068 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
6069 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
6070 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
6071 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
6072 according to the current fontset.
6074 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
6076 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
6077 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
6078 nonascii-insert-offset.
6080 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
6081 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
6082 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
6083 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
6085 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
6086 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
6088 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
6089 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
6091 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
6092 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
6095 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
6096 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
6098 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
6099 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
6100 all variables that have documentation.
6102 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
6103 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
6104 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
6105 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
6106 it should show; the default is 20.
6108 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
6109 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
6112 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
6113 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
6114 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
6115 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
6116 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
6117 Newly added options are included as well.
6119 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
6120 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
6121 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
6123 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
6126 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
6127 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
6129 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
6130 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
6133 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
6134 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
6137 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
6138 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
6139 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
6140 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
6143 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
6145 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
6146 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
6147 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
6149 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
6150 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
6151 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
6156 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
6157 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
6159 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
6160 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
6162 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
6163 read and post multi-lingual articles.
6165 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
6166 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
6167 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
6168 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
6169 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
6170 made invisible again.
6172 ** Mail reading and sending changes
6174 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
6175 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
6176 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
6179 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
6180 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
6181 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
6182 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
6183 rmail-default-body-file.
6185 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
6186 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
6187 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
6189 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
6190 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
6191 is evaluated to insert the signature.
6193 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
6194 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
6195 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
6196 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
6197 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
6198 especially interested in trying feedmail.
6200 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
6201 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
6202 provided by feedmail are:
6204 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
6205 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
6206 there is also a queue for draft messages
6208 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
6209 be prompted for confirmation
6211 **** does smart filling of address headers
6213 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
6214 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
6215 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
6217 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
6218 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
6219 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
6220 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
6224 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
6225 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
6227 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
6228 run Dired on the directory name at point.
6230 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
6231 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
6232 for a specified regexp.
6236 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
6239 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
6240 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
6243 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
6244 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
6245 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
6246 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
6248 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
6249 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
6250 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
6251 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
6252 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
6254 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
6255 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
6256 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
6257 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
6258 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
6260 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
6261 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
6262 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
6263 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
6265 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
6266 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
6267 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
6269 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
6270 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
6271 session to resolve them.
6273 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
6274 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
6275 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
6278 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
6279 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
6280 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
6281 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
6282 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
6283 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
6286 ** Changes in Font Lock
6288 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
6289 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
6290 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
6291 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
6292 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
6294 ** Frame name display changes
6296 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
6297 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
6298 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
6299 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
6301 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
6302 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
6305 ** Comint (subshell) changes
6307 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
6308 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
6309 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
6311 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
6313 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
6314 that is, the line after the last line you got.
6315 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
6317 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
6318 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
6321 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
6322 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
6323 previously sent input.
6325 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
6326 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
6327 as the search string.
6329 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
6330 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
6334 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
6335 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
6336 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
6339 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
6340 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
6341 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
6342 style is still the default however.
6344 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
6346 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
6347 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
6348 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
6350 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
6351 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
6353 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
6354 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
6356 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
6357 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
6359 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
6360 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
6362 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
6363 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
6364 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
6365 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
6367 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
6369 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
6370 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
6371 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
6373 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
6374 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
6375 expanding dynamically.
6377 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
6378 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
6380 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
6381 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
6382 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
6383 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
6385 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
6387 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6389 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
6390 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
6391 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
6392 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
6393 against the first word in the title.
6395 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
6396 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
6397 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
6398 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
6399 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
6400 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
6402 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
6403 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
6404 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
6405 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
6407 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
6409 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
6410 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
6411 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
6412 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
6413 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
6414 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
6416 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
6417 Editing group once the package is loaded.
6419 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
6420 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
6421 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behavior.
6423 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
6424 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
6428 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
6429 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
6430 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
6432 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
6433 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
6434 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
6435 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
6438 o URLs are automatically skipped
6439 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
6441 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
6443 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
6445 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
6446 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
6447 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
6448 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
6450 *** New recursive parser.
6452 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
6453 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
6454 recursive parser scans the individual files.
6456 *** Parsing only part of a document.
6458 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
6459 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
6460 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
6462 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
6464 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
6466 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
6468 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
6470 *** Using multiple selection buffers
6472 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
6473 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
6475 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
6477 *** References to external documents.
6479 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
6480 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
6481 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
6482 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
6483 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
6484 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
6485 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
6487 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
6489 The built-in command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
6490 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
6492 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
6493 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
6495 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
6497 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
6498 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
6500 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
6502 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
6503 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
6504 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
6505 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
6506 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
6507 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
6510 *** Support for the varioref package
6512 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
6516 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
6517 and citations are created. These hooks are
6518 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
6519 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
6521 *** Citations outside LaTeX
6523 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
6524 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
6526 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
6528 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
6529 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
6532 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
6534 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
6535 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
6536 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
6537 directories that contain the same file name.
6539 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
6540 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
6541 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
6542 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
6543 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
6544 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
6545 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
6548 ** New modes and packages
6550 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
6551 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
6552 it, but some do not.
6554 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
6557 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
6558 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
6561 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
6563 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
6564 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
6565 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
6566 established system of notation similar to Chess.
6568 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
6569 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
6570 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
6572 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
6573 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
6574 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
6575 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
6576 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
6579 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
6580 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
6582 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
6583 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
6584 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
6585 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
6587 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
6589 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
6590 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
6591 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
6592 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
6593 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
6594 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
6595 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
6596 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
6597 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
6598 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
6599 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
6601 Platform-specific modes:
6603 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
6604 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
6605 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
6606 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
6607 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
6608 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
6609 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
6610 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
6611 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
6613 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
6615 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
6616 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
6617 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
6618 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
6620 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
6621 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
6622 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
6624 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
6625 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
6626 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
6627 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
6629 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
6630 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
6631 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
6634 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
6635 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
6636 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
6637 current input method for reading this one event.
6639 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
6640 now control whether to output certain characters as
6641 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
6642 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
6643 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
6644 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
6646 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
6648 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
6649 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
6651 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
6652 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
6653 always increases point by 1.
6655 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
6656 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
6658 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
6660 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
6661 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
6662 default value changed. For example,
6664 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
6669 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
6672 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
6673 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
6674 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
6675 `:version' in the top level group.
6677 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
6679 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
6680 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
6682 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
6683 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
6684 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
6687 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
6688 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
6691 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
6692 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
6693 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
6695 ** Frame-local variables.
6697 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
6698 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
6699 local bindings for that variable.
6701 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
6702 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
6703 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
6706 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
6707 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
6708 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
6709 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
6711 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
6712 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
6713 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
6714 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
6716 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
6717 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
6718 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
6719 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
6720 See the documentation in sregex.el.
6722 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
6723 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
6724 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
6725 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
6727 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
6728 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
6730 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
6731 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
6732 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
6734 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
6735 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
6736 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
6737 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
6739 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
6740 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
6743 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
6744 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
6745 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
6746 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
6747 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
6749 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
6750 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
6751 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
6752 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
6754 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
6755 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
6756 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
6757 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
6758 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
6760 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
6761 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
6762 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
6763 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
6765 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
6766 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
6767 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
6769 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
6770 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
6771 was directed to display this buffer.
6773 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
6774 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
6775 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
6776 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
6777 set-window-configuration.
6779 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
6780 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
6781 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
6782 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
6784 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
6785 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
6786 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
6788 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
6789 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
6790 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
6792 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
6793 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
6795 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
6796 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
6798 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
6799 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
6800 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
6802 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
6803 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
6804 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
6805 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
6809 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
6810 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
6813 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
6814 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
6815 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
6816 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
6817 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
6819 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
6821 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
6822 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
6823 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
6824 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
6827 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
6828 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
6829 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
6830 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
6831 The supported properties include
6833 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6835 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6836 item should appear in the menu.
6838 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
6839 which will be REAL-BINDING.
6840 It should return a binding to use instead.
6842 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
6843 binding for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
6844 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
6845 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
6846 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
6849 This means that the command normally has no
6850 keyboard equivalent.
6851 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
6852 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
6853 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
6854 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
6855 value says whether this button is currently selected.
6857 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
6858 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
6860 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
6864 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
6865 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
6866 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
6867 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
6869 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
6871 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6872 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
6873 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
6874 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
6875 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
6876 forward, away from the user.
6878 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6880 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
6881 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
6882 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
6883 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
6884 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
6886 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
6888 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6889 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
6890 that were dragged and dropped.
6892 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6894 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
6896 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
6897 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
6898 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
6900 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
6901 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
6902 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
6904 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
6905 in Emacs 19 and before.
6907 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
6908 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
6910 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
6911 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
6912 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
6913 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
6915 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
6916 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
6917 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
6918 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
6919 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
6921 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
6922 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
6923 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
6924 consistent with the new representation.
6926 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
6927 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
6928 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
6929 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6931 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
6932 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
6933 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
6935 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
6936 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
6937 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6939 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
6940 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
6941 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
6943 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6944 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
6946 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6947 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
6949 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
6950 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
6951 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
6952 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
6954 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
6955 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
6957 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
6958 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
6959 buffer or string being searched.
6961 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
6962 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
6963 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
6964 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
6965 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
6966 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
6967 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
6969 *** Structure of coding system changed.
6971 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
6972 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
6973 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
6974 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
6975 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
6976 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
6977 define-coding-system-alias.
6979 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
6980 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
6981 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
6982 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
6983 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
6984 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
6985 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
6988 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
6989 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
6990 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
6991 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
6993 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
6994 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
6995 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
6996 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
6998 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
6999 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
7000 This function requires a user interaction.
7002 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
7003 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
7004 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
7005 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
7006 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
7007 select-safe-coding-system.
7009 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
7010 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
7011 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
7014 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
7015 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
7016 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
7018 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
7019 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
7020 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
7021 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
7023 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
7024 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
7025 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
7028 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
7029 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
7031 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
7032 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
7033 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
7034 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
7035 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
7036 range of characters.
7038 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
7039 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
7041 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
7042 in the current buffer at position POS.
7044 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
7045 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
7046 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
7047 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
7048 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
7049 binding input-method-function to nil.
7051 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
7052 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
7053 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
7054 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
7055 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
7057 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
7058 subsequent events of a key sequence.
7060 *** You can customize any language environment by using
7061 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
7063 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
7064 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
7065 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
7066 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
7067 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
7069 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
7071 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
7072 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
7073 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
7076 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
7077 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
7079 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
7080 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
7081 in your .emacs file.)
7083 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
7084 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
7086 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
7087 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
7089 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
7090 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
7093 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
7094 delete the character before point, as usual.
7096 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
7097 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
7098 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
7100 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
7101 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
7102 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
7103 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
7104 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
7107 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
7108 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
7109 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
7110 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
7111 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
7113 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
7114 and is an alias for it.
7116 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
7117 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
7119 ** Scrolling changes
7121 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
7122 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
7124 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
7125 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
7128 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
7129 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
7130 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
7131 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
7133 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
7134 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
7135 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
7136 recenters the window.
7138 ** International character set support (MULE)
7140 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
7141 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
7142 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
7143 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
7144 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
7145 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
7147 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
7148 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
7149 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
7150 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
7151 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
7153 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
7154 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
7155 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
7156 language, to make it possible to type them.
7158 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
7159 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
7161 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
7162 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
7164 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
7166 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
7168 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
7169 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
7170 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
7171 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
7172 characters for their work until they want to change.
7176 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
7177 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
7178 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
7179 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
7180 support several input methods.
7182 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
7183 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
7186 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
7187 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
7188 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
7189 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
7190 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
7193 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
7194 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
7195 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
7196 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
7197 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
7199 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
7200 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
7201 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
7202 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
7204 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
7205 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
7206 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
7207 the first guess is wrong.
7209 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
7210 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
7212 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
7213 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
7214 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
7215 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
7217 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
7218 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
7219 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
7220 translate automatically to and from either one.
7222 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
7224 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
7225 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
7226 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
7229 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
7230 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
7231 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
7232 multibyte characters in that buffer.
7234 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
7235 character conversion as well.
7237 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
7239 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
7240 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
7241 requires using many fonts.
7243 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
7244 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
7246 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
7247 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
7248 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
7249 you would use a font.
7251 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
7252 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
7253 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
7255 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
7256 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
7259 *** Defining fontsets.
7261 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
7262 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
7263 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
7265 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
7266 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
7267 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
7268 standard fontset are created automatically.
7270 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
7271 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
7272 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
7273 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
7274 name is `fontset-startup'.
7276 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
7277 The resource value should have this form:
7278 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
7279 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
7280 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
7281 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
7282 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
7283 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
7284 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
7285 CHARSET-NAME should be the name of a character set, and FONT-NAME
7286 should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
7288 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
7289 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
7290 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
7292 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
7293 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
7295 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
7296 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
7297 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
7298 Here is the substitution rule:
7299 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
7300 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
7301 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
7302 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
7303 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
7305 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
7306 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
7307 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
7309 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
7310 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
7311 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
7312 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
7315 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
7316 defaults for a particular choice of language.
7318 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
7319 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
7320 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
7321 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
7322 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
7323 system for new files that you create.
7325 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
7326 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
7327 whole Emacs session.
7329 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
7330 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
7331 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
7333 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
7334 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
7335 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
7336 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
7337 coding systems that Emacs supports.
7339 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
7340 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
7341 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
7342 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
7343 is used for *the immediately following command*.
7345 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
7346 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
7348 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
7349 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
7351 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
7352 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
7354 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
7355 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
7356 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
7357 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
7360 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
7361 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
7362 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
7363 translated into that character code.
7365 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
7366 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
7368 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
7370 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
7371 the coding system for keyboard input.
7373 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
7374 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
7375 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
7377 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
7379 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
7380 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
7381 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
7382 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
7383 designed to work with terminals.
7385 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
7386 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
7387 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
7388 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
7389 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
7390 in the corresponding buffer.
7392 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
7394 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
7395 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
7396 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
7398 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
7399 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
7400 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
7403 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
7404 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
7406 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
7407 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
7408 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
7409 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
7411 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
7412 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
7413 related information.
7415 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
7416 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
7419 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
7420 information about the support for a particular language.
7421 You specify the language as an argument.
7423 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
7424 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
7427 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
7428 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
7429 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
7430 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
7432 A alternativnyj (Russian)
7434 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
7435 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
7436 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
7437 E euc-japan (Japanese)
7438 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
7439 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
7440 K euc-korea (Korean)
7443 S shift_jis (Japanese)
7446 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
7447 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
7448 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
7452 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
7453 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
7454 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
7455 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
7457 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
7458 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
7460 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
7461 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
7462 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
7463 Rmail files themselves.
7465 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
7466 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
7468 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
7471 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
7472 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
7473 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
7474 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
7475 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
7477 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
7478 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
7479 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
7482 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
7483 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
7484 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
7485 without any conversion.
7487 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
7488 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
7489 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
7490 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
7492 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
7493 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
7495 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
7496 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
7498 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
7499 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
7501 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
7502 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
7503 in the buffer before point.
7505 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
7506 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
7509 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
7510 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
7512 ** File locking works with NFS now.
7514 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
7515 in the same directory as FILENAME.
7517 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
7518 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
7519 can become a bottleneck.
7521 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
7522 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
7523 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
7524 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
7525 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
7526 so useful that the change is worth while.
7528 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
7529 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
7530 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
7531 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
7533 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
7534 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
7537 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
7538 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
7539 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
7541 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
7542 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
7543 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
7545 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
7546 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
7547 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
7549 ** Changes in View mode.
7551 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
7552 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
7554 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
7555 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
7557 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
7560 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
7561 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
7563 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
7564 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
7565 not just the selected window.
7567 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
7568 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
7569 turns View mode on or off.
7571 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
7572 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
7573 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
7575 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
7576 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
7578 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
7579 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
7580 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
7581 which version to compare with.
7583 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
7584 blocks if a match is inside the block.
7586 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
7587 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
7588 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
7589 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
7591 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
7592 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
7593 blocks, all of them or none.
7595 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
7596 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
7599 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
7600 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
7601 However, the mode will not be changed if
7602 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
7603 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
7604 not suitable for ordinary files, or
7605 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
7607 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
7609 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
7610 these commands do not change the major mode.
7612 ** M-x occur changes.
7614 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
7615 it performs a case-sensitive search.
7617 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
7618 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
7619 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
7621 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
7622 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
7623 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
7624 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
7625 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
7627 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
7628 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
7629 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
7630 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
7632 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7633 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
7634 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
7636 ** Outline mode changes.
7638 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
7640 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
7642 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
7643 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
7644 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
7647 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
7648 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
7651 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
7652 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
7654 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
7656 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7657 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
7658 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
7659 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
7661 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
7662 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
7663 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
7665 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
7666 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
7669 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
7670 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
7671 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
7672 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
7674 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
7675 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
7676 can be. The default value is 30.
7678 ** Changes in Mail mode.
7680 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
7681 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
7682 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
7683 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
7684 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
7687 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
7688 compose-mail-other-frame.
7690 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
7691 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
7692 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
7693 buffer that shows the original message.
7695 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
7696 with separator lines around the contents.
7698 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
7699 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
7700 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
7701 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
7703 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
7705 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
7706 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
7707 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
7708 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
7710 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
7711 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
7714 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
7715 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
7718 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
7719 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
7720 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
7721 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
7723 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
7724 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
7725 be taken to be magic.
7727 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
7728 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
7729 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
7731 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
7732 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
7734 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
7735 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
7737 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
7739 new key dired.el binding old key
7740 ------- ---------------- -------
7741 * c dired-change-marks c
7743 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
7744 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
7745 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
7747 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
7748 * ? dired-unmark-all-files C-M-?
7749 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
7750 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
7751 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
7752 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
7756 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
7757 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
7758 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
7759 each time you run it.
7761 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
7762 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
7764 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
7765 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
7766 means to move in the opposite direction.
7768 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
7769 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
7771 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
7772 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
7773 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
7774 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
7779 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
7781 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
7784 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
7785 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
7787 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
7790 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
7792 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
7794 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
7796 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
7797 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
7798 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
7800 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
7802 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
7804 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
7805 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
7807 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
7808 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
7809 used to pick articles.
7811 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
7812 another have been added.
7814 `M-x gnus-change-server'
7816 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
7817 generating lines in buffers.
7819 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
7822 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
7824 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
7826 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
7828 *** Scores can be decayed.
7830 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
7832 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
7833 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
7835 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
7838 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
7840 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
7841 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `C-M-d'.
7843 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
7845 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
7846 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
7848 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
7849 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
7851 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
7854 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
7855 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
7857 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
7859 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
7861 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
7863 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
7865 Use the `Y c' command.
7867 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
7869 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
7871 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
7873 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
7874 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
7876 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
7878 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
7880 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
7881 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
7883 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
7885 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
7886 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
7887 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
7888 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
7891 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
7892 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
7893 particular news group. This can be done by:
7895 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
7897 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
7898 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
7899 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
7900 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
7901 for reading and posting).
7903 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
7904 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
7905 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
7906 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
7909 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
7910 default. Here are some of these default settings:
7912 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
7913 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
7914 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
7915 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
7916 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
7918 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
7919 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
7923 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
7924 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
7925 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
7926 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
7927 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
7930 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
7931 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
7932 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
7933 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
7934 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
7935 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
7937 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
7938 of the current buffer.
7940 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
7941 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
7942 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
7944 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
7945 style that the Python developers like.
7947 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
7948 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
7949 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
7953 *** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
7954 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
7955 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
7957 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
7958 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
7961 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
7962 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
7964 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
7965 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
7966 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
7967 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
7969 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
7970 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
7972 ** Calendar changes.
7974 *** A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or
7975 subclasses of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow
7976 you do this for the year of the selected date, or the
7977 following/previous years.
7979 *** There is now support for the Baha'i calendar system. Use `pb' in
7980 the *Calendar* buffer to display the current Baha'i date. The Baha'i
7981 calendar, or "Badi calendar" is a system of 19 months with 19 days
7982 each, and 4 intercalary days (5 during a Gregorian leap year). The
7983 calendar begins May 23, 1844, with each of the months named after a
7984 supposed attribute of God.
7988 There are some new user variables and subgroups for customizing the page
7991 *** Headers & Footers (subgroup)
7993 Some printer systems print a header page and force the first page to
7994 be printed on the back of the header page when using duplex. If your
7995 printer system has this behavior, set variable
7996 `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' to t.
7998 If variable `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' is non-nil, it prints a
7999 blank page as the very first printed page. So, it behaves as if the
8000 very first character of buffer (or region) were a form feed ^L (\014).
8002 The variable `ps-spool-config' specifies who is responsible for
8003 setting duplex mode and page size. Valid values are:
8005 lpr-switches duplex and page size are configured by `ps-lpr-switches'.
8006 Don't forget to set `ps-lpr-switches' to select duplex
8007 printing for your printer.
8009 setpagedevice duplex and page size are configured by ps-print using the
8010 setpagedevice PostScript operator.
8012 nil duplex and page size are configured by ps-print *not* using
8013 the setpagedevice PostScript operator.
8015 The variable `ps-spool-tumble' specifies how the page images on
8016 opposite sides of a sheet are oriented with respect to each other. If
8017 `ps-spool-tumble' is nil, ps-print produces output suitable for
8018 bindings on the left or right. If `ps-spool-tumble' is non-nil,
8019 ps-print produces output suitable for bindings at the top or bottom.
8020 This variable takes effect only if `ps-spool-duplex' is non-nil.
8021 The default value is nil.
8023 The variable `ps-header-frame-alist' specifies a header frame
8024 properties alist. Valid frame properties are:
8026 fore-color Specify the foreground frame color.
8027 Value should be a float number between 0.0 (black
8028 color) and 1.0 (white color), or a string which is a
8029 color name, or a list of 3 float numbers which
8030 correspond to the Red Green Blue color scale, each
8031 float number between 0.0 (dark color) and 1.0 (bright
8032 color). The default is 0 ("black").
8034 back-color Specify the background frame color (similar to fore-color).
8035 The default is 0.9 ("gray90").
8037 shadow-color Specify the shadow color (similar to fore-color).
8038 The default is 0 ("black").
8040 border-color Specify the border color (similar to fore-color).
8041 The default is 0 ("black").
8043 border-width Specify the border width.
8046 Any other property is ignored.
8048 Don't change this alist directly; instead use Custom, or the
8049 `ps-value', `ps-get', `ps-put' and `ps-del' functions (see there for
8052 Ps-print can also print footers. The footer variables are:
8053 `ps-print-footer', `ps-footer-offset', `ps-print-footer-frame',
8054 `ps-footer-font-family', `ps-footer-font-size', `ps-footer-line-pad',
8055 `ps-footer-lines', `ps-left-footer', `ps-right-footer' and
8056 `ps-footer-frame-alist'. These variables are similar to those
8057 controlling headers.
8059 *** Color management (subgroup)
8061 If `ps-print-color-p' is non-nil, the buffer's text will be printed in
8064 *** Face Management (subgroup)
8066 If you need to print without worrying about face background colors,
8067 set the variable `ps-use-face-background' which specifies if face
8068 background should be used. Valid values are:
8070 t always use face background color.
8071 nil never use face background color.
8072 (face...) list of faces whose background color will be used.
8074 *** N-up printing (subgroup)
8076 The variable `ps-n-up-printing' specifies the number of pages per
8079 The variable `ps-n-up-margin' specifies the margin in points (pt)
8080 between the sheet border and the n-up printing.
8082 If variable `ps-n-up-border-p' is non-nil, a border is drawn around
8085 The variable `ps-n-up-filling' specifies how the page matrix is filled
8086 on each sheet of paper. Following are the valid values for
8087 `ps-n-up-filling' with a filling example using a 3x4 page matrix:
8089 `left-top' 1 2 3 4 `left-bottom' 9 10 11 12
8093 `right-top' 4 3 2 1 `right-bottom' 12 11 10 9
8097 `top-left' 1 4 7 10 `bottom-left' 3 6 9 12
8101 `top-right' 10 7 4 1 `bottom-right' 12 9 6 3
8105 Any other value is treated as `left-top'.
8107 *** Zebra stripes (subgroup)
8109 The variable `ps-zebra-color' controls the zebra stripes grayscale or
8112 The variable `ps-zebra-stripe-follow' specifies how zebra stripes
8113 continue on next page. Visually, valid values are (the character `+'
8114 to the right of each column indicates that a line is printed):
8116 `nil' `follow' `full' `full-follow'
8117 Current Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
8118 1 XXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXX + 1 XXXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8119 2 XXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXX + 2 XXXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8120 3 XXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXX + 3 XXXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8124 7 XXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXX + 7 XXXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8125 8 XXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXX + 8 XXXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8126 9 XXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXX + 9 XXXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8129 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
8130 Next Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
8131 12 XXXXX + 12 + 10 XXXXXX + 10 +
8132 13 XXXXX + 13 XXXXXXXX + 11 XXXXXX + 11 +
8133 14 XXXXX + 14 XXXXXXXX + 12 XXXXXX + 12 +
8134 15 + 15 XXXXXXXX + 13 + 13 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8135 16 + 16 + 14 + 14 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8136 17 + 17 + 15 + 15 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
8137 18 XXXXX + 18 + 16 XXXXXX + 16 +
8138 19 XXXXX + 19 XXXXXXXX + 17 XXXXXX + 17 +
8139 20 XXXXX + 20 XXXXXXXX + 18 XXXXXX + 18 +
8142 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
8144 Any other value is treated as `nil'.
8147 *** Printer management (subgroup)
8149 The variable `ps-printer-name-option' determines the option used by
8150 some utilities to indicate the printer name; it's used only when
8151 `ps-printer-name' is a non-empty string. If you're using the lpr
8152 utility to print, for example, `ps-printer-name-option' should be set
8155 The variable `ps-manual-feed' indicates if the printer requires manual
8156 paper feeding. If it's nil, automatic feeding takes place. If it's
8157 non-nil, manual feeding takes place.
8159 The variable `ps-end-with-control-d' specifies whether C-d (\x04)
8160 should be inserted at end of the generated PostScript. Non-nil means
8163 *** Page settings (subgroup)
8165 If variable `ps-warn-paper-type' is nil, it's *not* treated as an
8166 error if the PostScript printer doesn't have a paper with the size
8167 indicated by `ps-paper-type'; the default paper size will be used
8168 instead. If `ps-warn-paper-type' is non-nil, an error is signaled if
8169 the PostScript printer doesn't support a paper with the size indicated
8170 by `ps-paper-type'. This is used when `ps-spool-config' is set to
8173 The variable `ps-print-upside-down' determines the orientation for
8174 printing pages: nil means `normal' printing, non-nil means
8175 `upside-down' printing (that is, the page is rotated by 180 degrees).
8177 The variable `ps-selected-pages' specifies which pages to print. If
8178 it's nil, all pages are printed. If it's a list, list elements may be
8179 integers specifying a single page to print, or cons cells (FROM . TO)
8180 specifying to print from page FROM to TO. Invalid list elements, that
8181 is integers smaller than one, or elements whose FROM is greater than
8182 its TO, are ignored.
8184 The variable `ps-even-or-odd-pages' specifies how to print even/odd
8185 pages. Valid values are:
8187 nil print all pages.
8189 `even-page' print only even pages.
8191 `odd-page' print only odd pages.
8193 `even-sheet' print only even sheets.
8194 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
8195 `even-page', but for values greater than 1, it'll
8196 print only the even sheet of paper.
8198 `odd-sheet' print only odd sheets.
8199 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
8200 `odd-page'; but for values greater than 1, it'll print
8201 only the odd sheet of paper.
8203 Any other value is treated as nil.
8205 If you set `ps-selected-pages' (see there for documentation), pages
8206 are filtered by `ps-selected-pages', and then by
8207 `ps-even-or-odd-pages'. For example, if we have:
8209 (setq ps-selected-pages '(1 4 (6 . 10) (12 . 16) 20))
8211 and we combine this with `ps-even-or-odd-pages' and
8212 `ps-n-up-printing', we get:
8214 `ps-n-up-printing' = 1:
8215 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
8216 nil 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20
8217 even-page 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
8218 odd-page 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
8219 even-sheet 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
8220 odd-sheet 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
8222 `ps-n-up-printing' = 2:
8223 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
8224 nil 1/4, 6/7, 8/9, 10/12, 13/14, 15/16, 20
8225 even-page 4/6, 8/10, 12/14, 16/20
8226 odd-page 1/7, 9/13, 15
8227 even-sheet 6/7, 10/12, 15/16
8228 odd-sheet 1/4, 8/9, 13/14, 20
8230 *** Miscellany (subgroup)
8232 The variable `ps-error-handler-message' specifies where error handler
8233 messages should be sent.
8235 It is also possible to add a user-defined PostScript prologue code in
8236 front of all generated prologue code by setting the variable
8237 `ps-user-defined-prologue'.
8239 The variable `ps-line-number-font' specifies the font for line numbers.
8241 The variable `ps-line-number-font-size' specifies the font size in
8242 points for line numbers.
8244 The variable `ps-line-number-color' specifies the color for line
8245 numbers. See `ps-zebra-color' for documentation.
8247 The variable `ps-line-number-step' specifies the interval in which
8248 line numbers are printed. For example, if `ps-line-number-step' is set
8249 to 2, the printing will look like:
8261 integer an integer specifying the interval in which line numbers are
8262 printed. If it's smaller than or equal to zero, 1
8265 `zebra' specifies that only the line number of the first line in a
8266 zebra stripe is to be printed.
8268 Any other value is treated as `zebra'.
8270 The variable `ps-line-number-start' specifies the starting point in
8271 the interval given by `ps-line-number-step'. For example, if
8272 `ps-line-number-step' is set to 3, and `ps-line-number-start' is set to
8273 3, the output will look like:
8287 The variable `ps-postscript-code-directory' specifies the directory
8288 where the PostScript prologue file used by ps-print is found.
8290 The variable `ps-line-spacing' determines the line spacing in points,
8291 for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
8294 The variable `ps-paragraph-spacing' determines the paragraph spacing,
8295 in points, for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
8298 The variable `ps-paragraph-regexp' specifies the paragraph delimiter.
8300 The variable `ps-begin-cut-regexp' and `ps-end-cut-regexp' specify the
8301 start and end of a region to cut out when printing.
8303 ** hideshow changes.
8305 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
8308 *** Support for java-mode added.
8310 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
8311 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
8313 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the comments at
8314 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
8315 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
8317 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
8318 robust and a lot faster.
8320 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
8322 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
8323 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
8324 documentation for more details.
8326 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
8328 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
8329 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
8330 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
8331 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
8332 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
8334 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
8335 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
8336 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
8337 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
8343 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
8344 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
8345 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
8346 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
8347 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
8348 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
8350 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
8352 *** Maximum decoration
8354 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
8355 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
8356 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
8357 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
8358 to get the old behavior.
8362 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
8364 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
8365 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
8367 *** Configurable support
8369 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
8370 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
8371 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
8372 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
8373 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
8374 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
8375 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
8377 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
8378 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
8379 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
8381 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
8383 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
8384 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
8387 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
8389 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
8395 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
8396 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
8397 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
8398 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
8400 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
8402 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
8403 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
8404 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
8406 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
8408 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
8409 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
8410 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
8411 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
8412 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
8413 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
8414 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
8416 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
8417 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
8418 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
8419 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
8420 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
8421 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
8423 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
8425 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
8426 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
8427 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
8428 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
8430 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
8433 ** Ada mode changes.
8435 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
8436 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
8437 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
8438 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
8441 *** There are two new commands:
8442 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
8443 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
8445 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
8446 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
8447 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
8449 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
8450 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
8451 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
8453 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
8454 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
8455 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
8456 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
8458 ** Scheme mode changes.
8460 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
8461 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
8462 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
8463 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
8466 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
8467 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
8468 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
8469 variables as buffer-local variables.
8471 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
8474 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
8476 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
8477 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
8478 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
8479 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
8481 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
8482 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
8485 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
8486 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
8487 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
8488 option takes precedence.
8490 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
8491 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
8492 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
8494 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
8495 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
8498 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
8499 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
8501 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
8502 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
8505 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
8506 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
8507 these register values no longer become completely useless.
8508 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
8509 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
8510 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
8512 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
8513 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
8514 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
8515 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
8517 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
8518 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
8519 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
8520 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
8521 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
8523 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
8524 since it applies only to the current frame.
8526 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
8527 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
8528 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
8530 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
8531 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
8532 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
8533 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
8534 instead of just the file you are editing.
8538 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
8539 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
8540 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
8541 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
8542 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
8545 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
8546 knows which kind of label is needed.
8548 C-c ) reftex-reference
8549 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
8550 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
8552 C-c [ reftex-citation
8553 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
8554 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
8556 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
8557 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
8560 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
8561 can quickly jump to every section.
8563 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
8564 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
8565 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
8566 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
8567 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
8569 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8571 *** Info documentation is now available.
8573 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
8574 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
8576 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
8577 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
8579 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
8580 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
8582 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
8583 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
8584 appropriate functions.
8586 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
8587 entries. They are bound by default to C-M-l and C-M-h.
8589 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
8592 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
8593 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
8595 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
8598 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
8599 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
8600 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
8602 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
8603 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
8604 prefixed with `ALT'.
8606 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
8607 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
8608 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
8611 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
8612 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
8613 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
8615 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
8616 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
8618 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
8619 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
8620 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
8622 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
8624 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
8626 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
8629 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
8630 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
8633 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
8636 *** Added support for imenu.
8638 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
8639 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
8640 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
8641 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
8643 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
8644 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
8646 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
8648 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
8650 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
8651 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
8652 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
8655 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
8656 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
8658 ** browse-url changes
8660 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
8661 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
8662 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
8663 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
8664 customization variables.
8666 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
8668 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
8669 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
8670 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
8674 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
8675 pops up the Info file for this command.
8677 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
8678 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
8679 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
8682 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
8683 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
8684 files in the same directory.
8686 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
8687 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
8688 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
8692 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
8693 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
8695 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
8696 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
8697 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
8698 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
8699 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
8700 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
8701 color when Viper is in insert state.
8702 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
8703 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
8704 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
8708 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
8709 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
8710 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
8711 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
8712 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
8714 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
8716 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
8717 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
8719 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
8720 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
8721 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
8723 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
8724 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
8725 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
8726 methods and protocols.
8728 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
8729 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
8730 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
8733 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
8734 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
8735 at least M times and as many as N times.
8737 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
8738 in files has changed slightly.
8740 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
8741 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
8742 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
8743 with old time-stamp-format values.
8745 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
8746 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
8747 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
8750 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
8751 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
8752 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
8753 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
8754 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
8755 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
8757 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
8758 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
8759 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
8761 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
8762 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
8763 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
8764 recommended now will continue to work then.
8766 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
8769 ** There are some additional major modes:
8771 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
8772 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
8773 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
8775 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
8776 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
8779 ** New Lisp packages include:
8781 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
8783 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
8784 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
8786 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
8788 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
8791 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
8792 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
8795 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
8796 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
8797 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
8798 strings or comments.
8800 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
8801 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
8802 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
8803 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
8806 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
8807 can visit them by short forms of their names.
8809 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
8810 Emacs Lisp function at point.
8812 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
8814 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
8815 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
8817 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
8819 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
8821 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
8823 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
8824 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
8826 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
8827 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
8828 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
8829 original place after inserting the copy.
8831 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
8834 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
8835 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
8836 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
8838 Enable mouse-drag with:
8839 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
8841 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
8843 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
8844 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
8846 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
8847 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
8851 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
8852 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
8853 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
8854 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
8855 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
8856 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
8857 instance) and vice versa.
8859 To use this package load it using
8860 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
8861 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
8862 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
8863 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
8864 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
8865 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
8867 *** Interface to ph.
8869 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
8871 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
8872 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
8875 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
8877 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
8878 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
8879 while the real cursor does not move.
8881 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
8882 for visiting your favorite web sites.
8884 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
8885 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
8889 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
8890 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
8891 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
8892 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
8894 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
8896 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
8898 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
8900 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
8901 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
8902 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
8903 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
8904 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
8906 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
8907 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
8908 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
8909 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
8910 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
8911 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
8913 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
8915 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
8916 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
8917 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
8918 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
8920 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
8921 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
8923 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
8924 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
8927 ** Basic Lisp changes
8929 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
8930 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
8932 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
8933 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
8936 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
8938 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
8940 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
8941 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
8943 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
8944 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
8947 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
8949 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
8951 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
8953 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
8954 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
8955 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
8958 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
8959 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
8960 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
8962 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
8963 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
8964 adding one of these suffixes.
8966 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
8967 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
8968 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
8970 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
8971 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
8973 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
8975 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
8976 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
8978 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
8979 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
8981 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
8983 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
8984 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
8986 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
8987 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
8988 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
8989 works using `save-current-buffer'.
8991 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
8992 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
8995 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
8996 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
8997 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
9000 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
9001 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
9004 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
9006 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
9007 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
9008 Then it returns that string.
9010 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
9012 (with-output-to-string
9013 (princ "The buffer is ")
9014 (princ (buffer-name)))
9016 returns "The buffer is foo".
9018 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
9021 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
9022 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
9023 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
9025 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
9026 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
9028 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
9029 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
9030 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
9031 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
9032 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
9033 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
9035 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
9036 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
9037 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
9040 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
9041 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
9042 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
9043 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
9044 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
9046 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
9047 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
9048 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
9049 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
9051 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
9052 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
9054 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
9056 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
9057 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
9058 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
9059 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
9062 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
9063 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
9066 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
9068 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
9069 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
9070 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
9071 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
9072 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
9074 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
9076 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
9077 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
9078 more than the number of characters.
9080 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
9081 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
9082 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
9083 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
9084 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
9085 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
9087 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
9088 and returns a string containing those characters.
9090 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
9091 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
9092 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
9093 character, sref signals an error.
9095 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
9096 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
9097 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
9099 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
9100 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
9101 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
9103 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
9104 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
9105 to a vector of the characters in it.
9107 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
9108 of a string. You call it as follows:
9110 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
9112 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
9113 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
9114 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
9115 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
9116 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
9118 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
9119 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
9121 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
9122 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
9124 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
9125 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
9126 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
9127 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
9129 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
9131 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
9133 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
9134 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
9135 are not included in the resulting value.
9137 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
9138 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
9139 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
9140 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
9142 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
9143 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
9144 character extends across that column), then the padding character
9145 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
9146 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
9147 column START-COLUMN.
9149 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
9150 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
9151 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
9152 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
9153 changed text, before the change.
9155 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
9156 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
9157 one character set for each script, not for each language.
9159 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
9161 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
9163 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
9164 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
9166 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
9167 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
9168 which identify the character within that character set.
9170 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
9171 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
9172 opposite of split-char.
9174 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
9175 of all the characters between BEG and END.
9177 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
9178 of all the characters in a string.
9180 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
9181 and specifying coding systems.
9183 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
9184 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
9185 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
9186 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
9187 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
9188 as what to do about code conversion.)
9190 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
9191 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
9193 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
9194 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
9195 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
9197 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
9198 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
9199 to match against a file name.
9201 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
9202 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
9203 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
9204 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
9205 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
9206 specifies the coding system for encoding.
9208 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
9209 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
9211 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
9212 the coding system to use for network sockets.
9214 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
9215 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
9216 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
9219 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
9220 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
9221 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
9222 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
9223 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
9224 specifies the coding system for encoding.
9226 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
9227 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
9229 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
9230 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
9231 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
9232 start the subprocess.
9234 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
9235 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
9236 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
9237 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
9238 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
9240 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
9241 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
9244 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
9245 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
9246 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
9247 connection permanently or until overridden.
9249 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
9250 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
9251 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
9252 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
9253 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
9254 system for one operation at a time.
9256 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
9257 files, subprocesses or network connections.
9259 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
9260 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
9261 The value is a cons cell,
9262 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
9263 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
9264 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
9265 input to the subprocess.
9267 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
9268 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
9270 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
9271 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
9272 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
9274 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
9275 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
9276 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
9277 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
9280 Thus, instead of writing
9282 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
9283 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
9285 you would now write this:
9287 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
9288 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
9292 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
9293 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
9294 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
9295 for a description of them.
9297 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
9298 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
9300 (defgroup ispell nil
9301 "Spell checking using Ispell."
9304 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
9305 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
9306 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
9307 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
9308 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
9310 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
9311 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
9312 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
9313 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
9314 first-level subgroups.
9316 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
9318 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
9319 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
9323 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
9324 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
9325 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
9326 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
9327 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
9328 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
9330 ** Text property changes
9332 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
9335 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
9336 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
9337 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
9338 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
9339 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
9341 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
9342 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
9343 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
9344 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
9346 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
9347 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
9348 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
9350 ** Changes in invisibility features
9352 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
9353 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
9354 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
9355 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
9356 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
9357 make the overlay visible.
9359 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
9360 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
9361 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
9362 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
9363 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
9364 t when it should hide it.
9366 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
9368 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
9369 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
9370 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
9371 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
9372 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
9373 Here is an example of how to do this:
9375 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
9376 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
9377 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
9378 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
9381 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
9384 ;; When done with the overlays:
9385 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
9387 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
9389 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
9391 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
9392 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
9393 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
9394 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
9396 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
9397 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
9398 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
9400 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
9401 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
9403 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
9404 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
9406 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
9407 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
9408 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
9410 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
9411 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
9412 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
9413 determine the syntax type of the character.
9415 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
9416 of the current buffer.
9418 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
9419 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
9420 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
9422 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
9423 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
9424 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
9425 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
9426 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
9428 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
9431 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
9432 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
9433 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
9435 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
9436 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
9437 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
9438 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
9439 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
9441 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
9442 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
9443 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
9445 ** Changes in face features
9447 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
9448 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
9450 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
9451 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
9453 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
9454 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
9456 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
9457 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
9459 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
9460 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
9461 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
9462 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
9465 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
9466 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
9468 ** Changes in file-handling functions
9470 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
9471 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
9472 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
9473 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
9475 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
9478 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
9479 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
9481 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
9482 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
9484 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
9485 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
9487 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
9488 character code conversion as well as other things.
9490 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
9491 (formerly it did not).
9493 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
9494 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
9496 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
9497 instead of constant strings.
9499 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
9500 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
9501 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
9503 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
9504 in the same way as before.
9506 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
9507 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
9508 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
9510 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
9511 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
9512 else, and returns nil.
9514 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
9515 directory cannot be listed.
9517 ** Changes in minibuffer input
9519 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
9520 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
9521 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
9522 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
9525 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
9526 It is available through the history command M-n.
9528 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
9529 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
9530 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
9531 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
9532 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
9534 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
9535 argument in this way.
9537 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
9538 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
9539 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
9541 ** Echo area features
9543 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
9544 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
9545 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
9546 after the echo area is cleared.
9548 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
9549 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
9551 ** Keyboard input features
9553 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
9554 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
9556 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
9557 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
9560 ** Frame-related changes
9562 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
9563 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
9564 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
9566 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
9567 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
9568 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
9570 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
9571 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
9572 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
9573 in the selected frame.
9575 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
9576 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
9577 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
9579 ** X Windows features
9581 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
9582 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
9583 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
9585 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
9586 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
9588 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
9589 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
9590 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
9592 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
9593 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
9595 ** Subprocess features
9597 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
9598 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
9601 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
9602 and returns the output from the command as a string.
9604 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
9605 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
9607 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
9608 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
9610 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
9611 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
9612 goes after the other menu items.
9614 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
9615 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
9616 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
9619 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
9620 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
9622 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
9623 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
9626 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
9627 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
9628 but its hook is still run.
9630 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
9631 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
9633 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
9634 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
9635 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
9637 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
9638 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
9639 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
9642 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
9643 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
9645 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
9646 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
9647 functions like display-time.
9649 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
9650 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
9652 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
9653 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
9654 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
9656 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
9657 if there is an error in compilation.
9659 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
9660 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
9661 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
9662 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
9664 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
9665 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
9666 the *scratch* buffer.
9668 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
9669 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
9670 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
9671 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
9673 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
9674 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
9675 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
9677 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
9678 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
9679 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
9680 and compose-mail-other-frame.
9682 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
9683 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
9684 full name of the specified user will be returned.
9686 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
9687 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
9688 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
9689 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
9690 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
9693 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
9694 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
9695 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
9696 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
9698 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
9699 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
9700 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
9701 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
9703 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
9705 ** imenu.el changes.
9707 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
9708 item from menu created by imenu.
9710 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
9711 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
9712 select one of those items.
9714 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
9716 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
9717 Copyright information:
9719 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
9721 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
9722 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
9723 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
9724 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
9726 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
9727 of this document, or of portions of it,
9728 under the above conditions, provided also that they
9729 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
9733 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"