Do not limit current-time-string to years 1000..9999.
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / NEWS
1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
2
3 Copyright (C) 2010-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
7 If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
8
9 This file is about changes in Emacs version 24.
10
11 See files NEWS.23, NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18,
12 and NEWS.1-17 for changes in older Emacs versions.
13
14 You can narrow news to a specific version by calling `view-emacs-news'
15 with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.
16
17 Temporary note:
18 +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
19 --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
20 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
21 so we will look at it and add it to the manual.
22
23 \f
24 * Installation Changes in Emacs 24.2
25
26 ** New configure option '--enable-gcc-warnings', intended for developers.
27 If building with GCC, this enables compile-time checks that warn about
28 possibly-questionable C code. On a recent GNU system there should be
29 no warnings; on older and on non-GNU systems the generated warnings
30 may be useful.
31
32 ---
33 ** Emacs uses libtinfo in preference to libncurses, if available.
34
35 ---
36 ** On FreeBSD and NetBSD, configure no longer adds /usr/local/lib and
37 /usr/pkg/lib to the linker search path. You must add them yourself if
38 you want them.
39
40 \f
41 * Startup Changes in Emacs 24.2
42
43 ** Emacs no longer searches for `leim-list.el' files beneath the standard
44 lisp/ directory. There should not be any there anyway. If you have
45 been adding them there, put them somewhere else, eg site-lisp.
46
47 \f
48 * Changes in Emacs 24.2
49
50 ** New functions `system-users', `system-groups' return lists of the user
51 name, group names known to the system (where possible).
52
53 ** If your Emacs was built from a bzr checkout, the new variable
54 `emacs-bzr-version' contains information about which bzr revision was used.
55
56 ** ImageMagick support, if available, is automatically enabled.
57 It is no longer necessary to call `imagemagick-register-types'
58 explicitly to install ImageMagick image types; that function is called
59 automatically when setting `imagemagick-types-inhibit'.
60
61 *** Setting `imagemagick-types-inhibit' to t now disables the use of
62 ImageMagick to view images, set
63
64 ** String values for `initial-buffer-choice' also apply to emacsclient
65 frames, if emacsclient is only told to open a new frame without
66 specifying any file to visit or expression to evaluate.
67
68 \f
69 * Editing Changes in Emacs 24.2
70
71 ** M-x move-to-column, if called interactively with no prefix arg, now
72 prompts for a column number.
73
74 ** `mouse-avoidance-banish-position' can now be used to customize
75 `mouse-avoidance-mode' further.
76
77 ** `C-M-f' and `C-M-b' will now move to the path name separator
78 character when doing minibuffer filename prompts.
79
80 ** `goto-char' is now bound to `M-g c'.
81
82 \f
83 * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 24.2
84
85 ** New `derived-mode' filter for Ibuffer, bound to `/ M'.
86 `/ m' is now bound to filter by used-mode, which used to be bound to `/ M'.
87
88 ** Apropos
89
90 *** The faces used by Apropos are now directly customizable.
91 These faces are named `apropos-symbol', `apropos-keybinding', and so on;
92 see the `apropos' Custom group for details.
93
94 **** The old options whose values specified faces to use were removed
95 (i.e. `apropos-symbol-face', `apropos-keybinding-face', etc.).
96
97 ** Customize
98
99 *** `custom-reset-button-menu' now defaults to t.
100
101 *** Non-option variables are never matched in `customize-apropos' and
102 `customize-apropos-options' (i.e. the prefix argument does nothing for
103 these commands now).
104
105 ** erc will look up server/channel names via auth-source and use the
106 channel keys found, if any.
107
108 ** Follow mode
109
110 *** The obsolete variable `follow-mode-off-hook' has been removed.
111
112 *** Follow mode no longer works by using advice.
113 The option `follow-intercept-processes' has been removed.
114
115 ** The `server-auth-key' variable can be used to set a permanent
116 shared key for Emacs Server.
117
118 ** In Perl mode, new option `perl-indent-parens-as-block' causes non-block
119 closing brackets to be aligned with the line of the opening bracket.
120
121 ** FIXME something happened to ses.el, 2012-04-17.
122
123 ** which-function-mode now applies to all applicable major modes by default.
124
125 ** D-Bus
126
127 +++
128 *** New variables `dbus-compiled-version' and `dbus-runtime-version'.
129
130 +++
131 *** The D-Bus object manager interface is implemented.
132
133 +++
134 *** Variables of type :(u)int32 and :(u)int64 accept floating points,
135 if their value does not fit into Emacs's integer range.
136
137 +++
138 *** The function `dbus-call-method' works non-blocking now, it can be
139 interrupted by C-g. `dbus-call-method-non-blocking' is obsolete.
140
141 +++
142 *** Signals can be sent also as unicast message.
143
144 +++
145 *** The argument list of `dbus-register-signal' has been extended,
146 according to the new match rule types of D-Bus. See the manual for
147 details.
148
149 +++
150 *** `dbus-init-bus' supports private connections.
151
152 +++
153 *** There is a new function `dbus-setenv'.
154
155 +++
156 ** notifications.el supports now version 1.2 of the Notifications API.
157 The function `notifications-get-capabilities' returns the supported
158 server properties.
159
160 ** Obsolete packages:
161
162 *** assoc.el
163 In most cases, assoc+member+push+delq work just as well.
164 And in any case it's just a terrible package: ugly semantics, terrible
165 inefficiency, and not namespace-clean.
166
167 *** mailpost.el
168
169 *** mouse-sel.el
170
171 \f
172 * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 24.2
173 \f
174 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 24.2
175
176 +++
177 ** Docstrings starting with `*' no longer indicate user options.
178 Only variables defined using `defcustom' are considered user options.
179 The function `user-variable-p' is now an obsolete alias for
180 `custom-variable-p'.
181
182 ** `face-spec-set' no longer sets frame-specific attributes when the
183 third argument is a frame (that usage was obsolete since Emacs 22.2).
184
185 +++
186 ** The arguments of `dbus-register-signal' are no longer just strings,
187 but keywords or keyword-string pairs. The old argument list will
188 still be supported for Emacs 24.x.
189
190 \f
191 * Lisp changes in Emacs 24.2
192
193 ** Completion
194
195 *** New function `completion-table-with-quoting' to handle completion
196 in the presence of quoting, such as file completion in shell buffers.
197
198 *** New function `completion-table-subvert' to use an existing completion
199 table, but with a different prefix.
200
201 ** Time
202
203 *** `current-time-string' no longer requires that its argument's year
204 must be in the range 1000..9999. It now works with any year supported
205 by the underlying C implementation.
206 \f
207 * Changes in Emacs 24.2 on non-free operating systems
208
209 ** New configure.bat options on MS-Windows:
210
211 *** --without-libxml2 omits support for libxml2, even if its presence
212 is detected.
213
214 \f
215 * Installation Changes in Emacs 24.1
216
217 ** Emacs can be compiled with Gtk+ 3.0 if you pass --with-x-toolkit=gtk3
218 to configure. Note that other libraries used by Emacs, RSVG and GConf,
219 also depend on Gtk+. You can disable them with --without-rsvg and
220 --without-gconf.
221
222 ** Emacs can be compiled with GnuTLS support.
223 This happens by default if a suitably recent version of the library is
224 found at build time. To prevent this, use the configure option
225 `--without-gnutls'. See below for GnuTLS features.
226
227 ** Emacs can be compiled with SELinux support.
228 This happens by default if a suitably recent version of the library is
229 found at build time. To prevent this, use the configure option
230 `--without-selinux'. See below for SELinux features.
231
232 ** Emacs can be compiled with ImageMagick support.
233 This happens by default if a suitably recent version of the library is
234 found at build time. To prevent this, use the configure option
235 `--without-imagemagick'. See below for ImageMagick features.
236 This feature is not available for the Nextstep or MS ports.
237
238 ** Emacs can be compiled with libxml2 support.
239 This happens by default if a suitably recent version of the library is
240 found at build time. To prevent this, use the configure option
241 `--without-xml2'. See below for libxml2 features.
242
243 ** By default, the installed Info and man pages are compressed.
244 You can disable this by configuring --without-compress-info.
245
246 ** New configure option --with-wide-int.
247 With it, Emacs integers typically have 62 bits, even on 32-bit machines.
248 On 32-bit hosts, this raises the limit on buffer sizes from about 512 MiB
249 to about 2 GiB.
250
251 ** New configure options: --with-mmdf, --with-mail-unlink, --with-mailhost.
252 These provide no new functionality, they just remove the need to edit
253 lib-src/Makefile by hand in order to use the associated features.
254
255 ** New configure option --enable-use-lisp-union-type.
256 This is only useful for Emacs developers to debug certain types of bugs.
257 This is not a new feature; only the configure flag is new.
258
259 ** The standalone programs digest-doc and sorted-doc are removed.
260 Emacs now uses Lisp commands `doc-file-to-man' and `doc-file-to-info'.
261
262 ** The standalone program `fakemail' is removed.
263 If you need it, feedmail.el provides a superset of the functionality.
264
265 \f
266 * Startup Changes in Emacs 24.1
267
268 ** The --unibyte, --multibyte, --no-multibyte, and --no-unibyte
269 command line arguments, and the EMACS_UNIBYTE environment variable, no
270 longer have any effect. (They were declared obsolete in Emacs 23.)
271
272 ** New command line option `--no-site-lisp' removes site-lisp directories
273 from load-path. -Q now implies this. This option does not affect the
274 EMACSLOADPATH environment variable (and hence has no effect for
275 Nextstep builds).
276
277 \f
278 * Changes in Emacs 24.1
279
280 ** Completion
281
282 *** Many packages now use the `completion-at-point' command,
283 rather than implementing separate completion commands.
284
285 *** `completion-at-point' now handles tags and semantic completion.
286
287 *** Completion in a non-minibuffer now tries to detect the end of completion
288 and pops down the *Completions* buffer accordingly.
289
290 *** New option `completion-cycle-threshold' allows completion cycling.
291
292 *** New option `completion-category-overrides' for overriding the
293 default completion style in certain circumstances.
294
295 *** New completion style `substring'.
296
297 *** Completion of buffer names uses `substring' completion by default.
298
299 *** The option `widget-complete-field' has been removed.
300
301 ** Mail changes
302
303 *** The first time you try sending mail, Emacs asks for a mail method.
304 This is implemented by a new default for `send-mail-function', which
305 is `sendmail-query-once'. This offers to use the smtpmail package, or
306 to use the old defaults relying on external mail facilities
307 (`sendmail-send-it' on GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems, and
308 `mailclient-send-it' on Windows).
309
310 *** Typing C-c m in the buffer made by M-x report-emacs-bug transfers
311 the report to your desktop's preferred mail client, if there is one.
312 This uses either the "xdg-email" utility, or Mac OS's "open" command.
313
314 *** See Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages for SMTPmail changes
315 and Mail mode changes
316
317 ** Emacs server and client changes
318
319 *** New option `server-port' specifies the port for TCP Emacs servers.
320
321 *** New emacsclient argument -q/--quiet suppresses some status messages.
322
323 *** New emacsclient argument --frame-parameters specifies the frame
324 parameters of any newly-created graphical frame.
325
326 *** If emacsclient shuts down due to Emacs signaling an error,
327 its exit status is 1.
328
329 *** New emacsclient argument --parent-id ID.
330 This opens a client frame in parent X window ID, via XEmbed, similar
331 to the --parent-id argument to Emacs.
332
333 ** Internationalization changes
334
335 *** Emacs now supports display and editing of bidirectional text.
336 Right-to-left (RTL) scripts, such as Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew, are
337 displayed in the correct visual order as expected by users of those
338 scripts. The display reordering is a "full bidirectionality" class
339 implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA). Buffers
340 with no RTL text should look exactly the same as before.
341
342 **** New buffer-local variable `bidi-display-reordering'.
343 To disable display reordering in a buffer, change this to nil.
344
345 **** New buffer-local variable `bidi-paragraph-direction'.
346 If nil (the default), Emacs determines the base direction of each
347 paragraph from its text, as specified by the UBA. Setting the value
348 to `right-to-left' or `left-to-right' forces a base direction on each
349 paragraph.
350
351 Paragraphs with right-to-left base direction are displayed starting at
352 the right window edge.
353
354 *** Enhanced support for characters with no glyphs in available fonts,
355 or, on text terminals, characters that cannot be encoded by the
356 terminal coding system. The new option `glyphless-char-display-control'
357 specifies how to display them: as a hexadecimal code in a box, a thin
358 1-pixel space, an empty box, etc.
359
360 *** New input methods: farsi, farsi-translit, bulgarian-alt-phonetic.
361
362 *** `nobreak-char-display' now also highlights Unicode hyphen chars
363 (U+2010 and U+2011).
364
365 *** New Hebrew translation of the Emacs Tutorial.
366 Type `C-u C-h t' to choose it in case your language setup doesn't
367 automatically select it.
368
369 ** An Emacs Lisp package manager is now included.
370 This is a convenient way to download and install additional packages,
371 from a package repository at http://elpa.gnu.org.
372
373 *** M-x list-packages shows a list of packages, which can be
374 selected for installation.
375
376 *** New command `describe-package', bound to `C-h P'.
377
378 *** By default, all installed packages are loaded automatically when
379 Emacs starts up. To disable this, set `package-enable-at-startup' to
380 nil. To specify the packages to load, customize `package-load-list'.
381
382 ** Custom theme changes
383
384 *** New command `M-x customize-themes', which provides a convenient
385 interface for enabling and disabling Custom themes.
386
387 *** New option `custom-theme-load-path' is the load path for themes.
388 Emacs no longer looks for Custom themes in `load-path'. The default
389 value of `custom-theme-load-path' says to look for themes in
390 `custom-theme-directory', followed by a subdirectory of
391 `data-directory' named "themes/", which contains a small selection of
392 built-in Custom themes.
393
394 *** New option `custom-safe-themes' records known-safe theme files.
395 If a theme is not in this list, Emacs queries before loading it, and
396 offers to save the theme to `custom-safe-themes' automatically. By
397 default, all themes included in Emacs are treated as safe.
398
399 ** Improved GTK integration
400
401 *** GTK scroll-bars are now placed on the right by default.
402 The function `set-scroll-bar-mode' can change this.
403
404 *** GTK tool bars can have just text, just images or images and text.
405 Customize `tool-bar-style' to choose the style. On a Gnome desktop,
406 the default is taken from desktop settings.
407
408 *** GTK tool bars can be placed on any edge of the frame.
409 The frame-parameter tool-bar-position controls this. It takes the
410 values top, left, right or bottom. The Options => Show/Hide menu has
411 entries for this.
412
413 *** The default colors for selected text (the `region' face) are taken
414 from the GTK theme when Emacs is built with GTK.
415
416 *** Emacs uses GTK tooltips by default if built with GTK.
417 You can disable this by changing `x-gtk-use-system-tooltips' to nil.
418
419 ** Graphical interface changes
420
421 *** On graphical displays, the mode-line no longer ends in dashes.
422 Also, the first dash (which does not indicate anything) is just
423 displayed as a space.
424
425 *** `menu-bar-select-buffer-function' lets you choose another operation
426 instead of `switch-to-buffer' when selecting an item in the Buffers menu.
427
428 *** Lucid menus and dialogs can display antialiased fonts if Emacs is
429 built with Xft. These fonts can be set via X resources, for example:
430 Emacs.pane.menubar.font: Courier-12
431
432 ** Exiting changes
433
434 *** Emacs now calls `kill-emacs' if it receives SIGTERM or SIGHUP,
435 or if it receives a SIGINT signal in batch mode.
436
437 *** `kill-emacs-hook' is now also run in batch mode.
438 Third-party code which adds to `kill-emacs-hook' should check if they
439 do the right thing in batch mode.
440
441 ** Scrolling changes
442
443 *** New scrolling commands `scroll-up-command' and `scroll-down-command'
444 (bound to C-v/[next] and M-v/[prior]) do not signal errors at top/bottom
445 of buffer at first key-press (instead they move to top/bottom of buffer)
446 when `scroll-error-top-bottom' is non-nil.
447
448 *** New option `scroll-error-top-bottom' (see above).
449
450 *** New scrolling commands `scroll-up-line' and `scroll-down-line'
451 scroll a line instead of full screen.
452
453 *** New property `scroll-command' should be set on a command's symbol to
454 define it as a scroll command affected by `scroll-preserve-screen-position'.
455
456 *** If you customize `scroll-conservatively' to a value greater than 100,
457 Emacs will never recenter point in the window when it scrolls due to
458 cursor motion commands or commands that move point (e.f., `M-g M-g').
459 Previously, you needed to use `most-positive-fixnum' as the value of
460 `scroll-conservatively' to achieve the same effect.
461
462 *** "Aggressive" scrolling now honors the scroll margins.
463 If you customize `scroll-up-aggressively' or
464 `scroll-down-aggressively' and move point off the window, Emacs now
465 scrolls the window so as to avoid positioning point inside the scroll
466 margin.
467
468 ** Basic SELinux support has been added.
469 This requires Emacs to be linked with libselinux at build time.
470
471 *** Emacs preserves the SELinux file context when backing up.
472 Also, the function `copy-file' has an extra optional argument for
473 preserving SELinux context, and the return value of `backup-buffer'
474 now includes the SELinux context.
475
476 *** New functions `file-selinux-context' and `set-file-selinux-context'
477 get and set the SELinux context of a file.
478
479 ** Trash changes
480
481 *** `delete-by-moving-to-trash' now only affects commands that specify
482 trashing. This avoids inadvertently trashing temporary files.
483
484 *** Calling `delete-file' or `delete-directory' with a prefix argument
485 now forces true deletion, regardless of `delete-by-moving-to-trash'.
486
487 ** File- and directory-local variable changes
488
489 *** You can stop directory local vars from applying to subdirectories.
490 Add an element (subdirs . nil) to the alist portion of any variables
491 settings to indicate that the section should not apply to
492 subdirectories.
493
494 *** Directory local variables can apply to some file-less buffers.
495 Affected modes include dired, vc-dir, and log-edit. For example,
496 adding "(diff-mode . ((mode . whitespace)))" to .dir-locals.el will
497 turn on `whitespace-mode' for *vc-diff* buffers. Modes should call
498 `hack-dir-local-variables-non-file-buffer' to support this.
499
500 *** Using "mode: MINOR-MODE" to enable a minor mode is deprecated.
501 Instead, use "eval: (minor-mode 1)".
502
503 *** The variable `inhibit-first-line-modes-regexps' has been renamed
504 to `inhibit-local-variables-regexps'. As the name suggests, it now
505 applies to ALL file local variables, not just -*- lines. The
506 associated `inhibit-first-line-modes-suffixes' has been renamed in the
507 corresponding way.
508
509 ** Window changes
510
511 *** The `quit-window' command now restores the last buffer displayed
512 in the quitted window.
513
514 *** Resizing an Emacs frame now preserves proportional window sizes,
515 modulo restrictions like window minimum sizes and fixed-size windows.
516
517 *** The behavior of `display-buffer' is now customizable in detail.
518
519 **** New option `display-buffer-base-action' specifies a list of
520 user-determined display "actions" (functions and optional arguments
521 for choosing the displaying window).
522
523 This takes precedence over the default display action, which is
524 specified by `display-buffer-fallback-action'.
525
526 **** New option `display-buffer-alist' maps buffer name regexps to
527 display actions, taking precedence over `display-buffer-base-action'.
528
529 *** New option `window-combination-limit'.
530 The new option `window-combination-limit' allows to return the space
531 obtained for resizing or creating a window more reliably to the window
532 from which such space was obtained.
533
534 *** New option `window-combination-resize'.
535 The new option `window-combination-resize' allows to split a window that
536 otherwise cannot be split because it's too small by stealing space from
537 other windows in the same combination. Subsequent resizing or deletion
538 of the window will resize all windows in the same combination as well.
539
540 *** New option `frame-auto-hide-function' lets you choose between
541 iconifying or deleting a frame when burying a buffer in a dedicated
542 frame, or quitting a window showing a buffer in a frame of its own.
543
544 *** New commands `maximize-window' and `minimize-window'.
545 These maximize and minimize the size of a window within its frame.
546
547 *** New commands `switch-to-prev-buffer' and `switch-to-next-buffer'.
548 These functions allow to navigate through the live buffers that have
549 been shown in a specific window.
550
551 ** Minibuffer changes
552
553 *** The inactive minibuffer has its own major mode `minibuffer-inactive-mode'.
554 This is handy for minibuffer-only frames, and is also used for the feature
555 where mouse-1 pops up *Messages*"', which can now easily be changed.
556
557 *** Minibuffers set `truncate-lines' to nil.
558 If you want to change the value to something else, you could use
559 for example `minibuffer-setup-hook'.
560
561 ** `auto-mode-case-fold' is now enabled by default.
562
563 ** `backup-by-copying-when-mismatch' now defaults to t.
564
565 ** New basic faces `error', `warning', `success'.
566 These are used to highlight text indicating failure, caution or
567 successful operation.
568
569 ** New option `list-colors-sort' defines the color sort order
570 for `list-colors-display'.
571
572 ** The variable `focus-follows-mouse' now always defaults to nil.
573
574 \f
575 * Editing Changes in Emacs 24.1
576
577 ** Search changes
578
579 *** C-y in Isearch is now bound to `isearch-yank-kill', instead of
580 `isearch-yank-line'.
581
582 *** M-y in Isearch is now bound to `isearch-yank-pop', instead of
583 `isearch-yank-kill'.
584
585 *** M-s C-e in Isearch is now bound to `isearch-yank-line'.
586
587 ** New commands `count-words-region' and `count-words'.
588
589 *** M-= is bound to `count-words-region', not `count-lines-region'.
590 The `count-words-region' command, when called interactively, reports
591 the number of lines, words, and characters in the region. It is a
592 superset of the old `count-lines-region', which is now an obsolete
593 alias for it.
594
595 ** The command `just-one-space' (M-SPC), if given a negative argument,
596 also deletes newlines around point.
597
598 ** Deletion changes
599
600 *** New option `delete-active-region'.
601 If non-nil, [delete] and DEL delete the region if it is active and no
602 prefix argument is given. If set to `kill', those commands kill
603 instead.
604
605 *** New command `delete-forward-char', bound to [delete].
606 This is meant for interactive use, and obeys `delete-active-region'.
607 The command `delete-char' does not obey `delete-active-region'.
608
609 *** `delete-backward-char' is now a Lisp function.
610 Apart from obeying `delete-active-region', its behavior is unchanged.
611 However, the byte compiler now warns if it is called from Lisp; Lisp
612 callers should use delete-char with a negative argument instead.
613
614 *** The option `mouse-region-delete-keys' has been deleted.
615
616 ** Selection changes.
617
618 The default handling of clipboard and primary selections has been
619 changed to conform with modern X applications. In short, most
620 commands for killing and yanking text now use the clipboard, while
621 mouse commands use the primary selection.
622
623 In the following, we provide a list of these changes, followed by a
624 list of steps to get the old behavior back if you prefer that.
625
626 *** `select-active-regions' now defaults to t.
627 Merely selecting text (e.g. with drag-mouse-1) no longer puts it in
628 the kill ring. The selected text is put in the primary selection, if
629 the system possesses a separate primary selection facility (e.g. X).
630
631 **** `select-active-regions' also accepts a new value, `only'.
632 This means to only set the primary selection for temporarily active
633 regions (usually made by mouse-dragging or shift-selection);
634 "ordinary" active regions, such as those made with C-SPC followed by
635 point motion, do not alter the primary selection.
636
637 **** `mouse-drag-copy-region' now defaults to nil.
638
639 *** mouse-2 is now bound to `mouse-yank-primary'.
640 This pastes from the primary selection, ignoring the kill-ring.
641 Previously, mouse-2 was bound to `mouse-yank-at-click'.
642
643 *** `x-select-enable-clipboard' now defaults to t on all platforms.
644
645 *** `x-select-enable-primary' now defaults to nil.
646 Thus, commands that kill text or copy it to the kill-ring (such as
647 M-w, C-w, and C-k) also use the clipboard---not the primary selection.
648
649 **** The "Copy", "Cut", and "Paste" items in the "Edit" menu are now
650 exactly equivalent to M-w, C-w, and C-y respectively.
651
652 **** Note that on MS-Windows, `x-select-enable-clipboard' was already
653 non-nil by default, as Windows does not support the primary selection
654 between applications.
655
656 *** To return to the previous behavior, do the following:
657
658 **** Change `select-active-regions' to nil.
659 **** Change `mouse-drag-copy-region' to t.
660 **** Change `x-select-enable-primary' to t (on X only).
661 **** Change `x-select-enable-clipboard' to nil.
662 **** Bind `mouse-yank-at-click' to mouse-2.
663
664 *** Support for X cut buffers has been removed.
665
666 *** X clipboard managers are now supported.
667 To inhibit this, change `x-select-enable-clipboard-manager' to nil.
668
669 ** New command `C-x r N' (`rectangle-number-lines') numbers the lines
670 in the current rectangle. With a prefix argument, this prompts for a
671 number to count from and for a format string.
672
673 ** `redisplay-dont-pause' now defaults to t.
674 This makes Emacs feel more responsive to editing commands that arrive
675 at high rate, e.g. if you lean on some key, because stopping redisplay
676 in the middle (when this variable is nil) forces more expensive
677 updates later on, and Emacs appears to be unable to keep up.
678
679 ** The behavior of <TAB> for active regions in Text mode has changed.
680 In Text and related modes, typing <TAB> (`indent-for-tab-command')
681 when the region is active causes Emacs to indent all the lines in the
682 region, aligning them with the line previous to the first line in the
683 region (or with the left margin if there is no previous line).
684
685 ** When `occur' is called with a prefix argument, matching strings are
686 collected into the `*Occur*' buffer without line numbers. If there
687 are parenthesized subexpressions in the specified regexp, `occur'
688 reads replacement text that may contain \\& and \\N whose convention
689 follows `replace-match'.
690
691 \f
692 * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 24.1
693
694 ** Archive Mode has basic support for browsing and updating 7z archives.
695
696 ** BibTeX mode
697
698 *** BibTeX mode now supports biblatex.
699 Use the variable `bibtex-dialect' to select different BibTeX dialects.
700 `bibtex-entry-field-alist' is now an obsolete alias for
701 `bibtex-BibTeX-entry-alist'.
702
703 *** New command `bibtex-search-entries', bound to C-c C-a.
704
705 *** New `bibtex-entry-format' option `sort-fields', disabled by default.
706
707 *** New variable `bibtex-search-entry-globally'.
708
709 ** Browse-url
710
711 *** New option `browse-url-mailto-function' specifies how to handle "mailto:"s.
712
713 *** The default browser used by the package is now the "xdg-open" program,
714 on platforms that support it. This calls your desktop's preferred browser.
715
716 ** Calendar, Diary, and Appt
717
718 *** Diary entries can contain non-printing "comments".
719 See the variable `diary-comment-start'.
720
721 *** Appointments can specify their individual warning times.
722 See the variable `appt-warning-time-regexp'.
723
724 *** The function specified by `appt-disp-window-function' may be passed
725 lists of arguments if multiple appointments are due at similar times.
726 If you are using a custom function for this, you should update it.
727
728 *** New function `diary-hebrew-birthday'.
729
730 *** Elements of `calendar-day-abbrev-array' and `calendar-month-abbrev-array'
731 may no longer be nil, but must all be strings.
732
733 *** The obsolete (since Emacs 22.1) method of enabling the appt
734 package by adding `appt-make-list' to `diary-hook' has been removed.
735 Use `appt-activate' instead.
736
737 *** Some appt variables (obsolete since Emacs 22.1) have been removed:
738 appt-issue-message (use the function appt-activate)
739 appt-visible/appt-msg-window (use the variable appt-display-format)
740
741 *** Some diary function aliases (obsolete since Emacs 22.1) have been removed:
742 view-diary-entries, list-diary-entries, show-all-diary-entries
743
744 ** CC Mode
745
746 *** New feature to "guess" the style in an existing buffer.
747 The main entry point is M-x c-guess.
748
749 *** Java Mode now supports Java 5.0 (Tiger) and 6 (Mustang).
750
751 *** `c-beginning-of-defun' and `c-end-of-defun' now respect nested scopes.
752 Thus C-M-a will, by default, go to the beginning of the immediate function,
753 not the top level.
754
755 *** "Macros with semicolons" can be registered for correct indentation.
756 Where such a macro ends a line (no semicolon) the next statement is no longer
757 parsed as a statement continuation.
758
759 ** Comint and modes derived from it use the standard completion code.
760
761 ** Compilation mode
762
763 *** Compilation mode can be used without Font Lock mode.
764 `compilation-parse-errors-function' is now obsolete.
765
766 *** New variable `compilation-filter-start', which is bound while
767 `compilation-filter-hook' runs. It records the start position of the
768 text inserted by `compilation-filter'.
769
770 *** `compilation-error-screen-columns' and `compilation-first-column'
771 are obeyed in the editing buffer. So programming language modes can
772 set them, whereas previously only the value in the *Compilation*
773 buffer was used.
774
775 ** Customize
776
777 *** Customize buffers now contain a search field.
778 The search is performed using `customize-apropos'.
779 To turn off the search field, set `custom-search-field' to nil.
780
781 *** Custom options now start out hidden if at their default values.
782 Use the arrow to the left of the option name to toggle visibility.
783
784 *** custom-buffer-sort-alphabetically now defaults to t.
785
786 *** The color widget now has a "Choose" button, which allows you to
787 choose a color via `list-colors-display'.
788
789 ** D-Bus
790
791 *** It is now possible to access buses other than the default system
792 or session bus.
793
794 *** The `dbus-register-method' and `dbus-register-property' functions
795 optionally do not register names.
796
797 *** The new function `dbus-register-service' registers a known service
798 name on a D-Bus without also registering a property or a method.
799
800 ** Dired-x
801
802 *** C-x C-j (`dired-jump') and C-x 4 C-j (`dired-jump-other-window'),
803 if called with a prefix argument, read a file name from the minibuffer
804 instead of using the current buffer.
805
806 *** The "dired local variables" feature of Dired-x is obsolete.
807 The standard directory local variables feature replaces it.
808
809 ** ERC changes
810
811 *** New options `erc-autojoin-timing' and `erc-autojoin-delay',
812 controlling attempts to autojoin a channel.
813
814 *** New variable `erc-coding-system-precedence': If we use `undecided'
815 as the server coding system, this variable will then be consulted.
816 The default is to decode strings that can be decoded as utf-8 as
817 utf-8, and do the normal `undecided' decoding for the rest.
818
819 ** Eshell changes
820
821 *** The default value of `eshell-directory-name' has changed
822 to be an "eshell" directory in `user-emacs-directory'.
823 The old "~/.eshell/" directory is still used if it exists, though.
824
825 ** gdb-mi
826
827 *** The M-x gdb command now uses the GDB Machine Interface protocol.
828 It now supports multithread non-stop debugging and simultaneous
829 debugging of several threads.
830
831 ** Image mode
832
833 *** RET (`image-toggle-animation') toggles animation, if applicable.
834 Animation plays once, unless the option `image-animate-loop' is non-nil.
835
836 ** Info
837
838 *** New command M-x info-display-manual displays a named Info manual.
839 If that manual is already visited in some Info buffer, it displays
840 that buffer. (This is handy if you have many manuals in many *info*
841 buffers, and don't remember the name of the buffer visiting the manual
842 you want to consult.) Otherwise, it loads and displays the manual.
843
844 *** `e' is now bound to `end-of-buffer' rather than to `Info-edit'.
845 This is for compatibility with the stand-alone Info reader program,
846 and also because `Info-edit' is a rarely used command that is disabled
847 by default.
848
849 ** Mail mode changes (not Message mode)
850
851 *** New command M-x mail-add-attachment for adding MIME attachments
852
853 *** The command M-x mail-attach-file was renamed to M-x mail-insert-file.
854 (Its name is misleading, since it has nothing to do with MIME
855 attachments.) The old name is now an obsolete alias to the new name.
856
857 ** MH-E has been updated to MH-E version 8.3.1.
858 See MH-E-NEWS for details.
859
860 ** Modula-2 mode provides auto-indentation.
861
862 ** mpc.el: Can use pseudo tags of the form tag1|tag2 as a union of two tags.
863
864 ** nXML mode no longer binds C-RET to `nxml-complete'.
865 Completion is now performed via `completion-at-point', bound to C-M-i
866 or M-TAB. If `nxml-bind-meta-tab-to-complete-flag' is non-nil (the
867 default), this performs tag completion.
868
869 ** Org mode has been updated to version 7.8.09.
870 See ORG-NEWS for details.
871
872 ** Prolog mode has been completely revamped, with lots of additional
873 functionality such as more intelligent indentation, electricity,
874 support for more variants, including Mercury, and a lot more.
875
876 ** Rmail
877
878 *** The command `rmail-epa-decrypt' decrypts OpenPGP data
879 in the Rmail incoming message.
880
881 *** The variable `rmail-message-filter' no longer has any effect.
882 This change was made in Emacs 23.1 but was not advertised at the time.
883 Try using `rmail-show-message-hook' instead.
884
885 ** Shell mode
886
887 *** M-x shell prompts for the shell path name if the default directory
888 is a remote file name and neither the environment variable $ESHELL nor
889 the variable `explicit-shell-file-name' is set.
890
891 *** TAB is now bound to the standard `completion-at-point' command,
892 which now implements the pcomplete rules for shell command completion.
893
894 ** SMTPmail
895
896 *** SMTPmail now uses encrypted connections (via STARTTLS) by default
897 if the mail server supports them. This uses either built-in GnuTLS
898 support, or the starttls.el library. Customize `smtpmail-stream-type'
899 to change this.
900
901 *** The variable `smtpmail-auth-credentials' has been removed.
902 By default, the information is now stored in the file ~/.authinfo.
903 This was the default value of smtpmail-auth-credentials. If you had
904 customized smtpmail-auth-credentials to a list of user names and
905 passwords, those settings are not used. During your first connection
906 to the smtp server, Emacs will prompt for the user name and password,
907 and offer to save them to ~/.authinfo. Or you can manually copy the
908 credentials to ~/.authinfo. For example, if you had
909
910 (setq smtpmail-auth-credentials
911 '(("mail.example.org" 25 "jim" "s!cret")))
912
913 then the equivalent line in ~/.authinfo would be
914
915 machine mail.example.org port 25 login jim password s!cret
916
917 See the auth-source manual for more information, e.g. on encrypting
918 the credentials file.
919
920 *** The variable `smtpmail-starttls-credentials' has been removed.
921 If you had that set, you need to put
922
923 machine smtp.whatever.foo port 25 key "~/.my_smtp_tls.key" cert "~/.my_smtp_tls.cert"
924
925 in your ~/.authinfo file instead.
926
927 ** SQL mode
928
929 *** New options `sql-port', `sql-connection-alist', `sql-send-terminator',
930 and `sql-oracle-scan-on'.
931
932 *** New options controlling prompting for login parameters.
933 Each supported product has a custom variable `sql-*-login-params',
934 which is a list of the parameters to be prompted for before a
935 connection is established.
936
937 *** The command `sql-product-interactive' now takes a prefix argument,
938 which causes it to prompt for an SQL product.
939
940 *** Product-specific SQL interactive commands now take prefix arguments.
941 These commands (`sql-sqlite', `sql-postgres', `sql-mysql', etc.),
942 given a prefix argument, prompt for a name for the SQL interactive
943 buffer. This reduces the need for calling `sql-rename-buffer'.
944
945 *** SQL interactive modes suppress command continuation prompts, and
946 replace tabs with spaces. The first change impacts multiple line SQL
947 statements entered with C-j between each line, statements yanked into
948 the buffer and statements sent with `sql-send-*' functions. The
949 second prevents the MySQL and Postgres interpreters from listing
950 object name completions when sent text via `sql-send-*' functions.
951
952 *** New command `sql-connect' starts a predefined SQLi session,
953 using the login parameters from `sql-connection-alist'.
954
955 *** New "Save Connection" menu item in SQLi buffers.
956 This gathers the login params specified for the SQLi session, if it
957 was not started by a connection, and saves them as a new connection.
958
959 *** New commands for listing database objects and details:
960 sql-list-all and sql-list-table.
961
962 *** An API for manipulating SQL product definitions has been added.
963
964 ** TeX modes
965
966 *** latex-electric-env-pair-mode keeps \begin..\end matched on the fly.
967
968 ** Tramp
969
970 *** New inline access method "ksu" (kerberized su).
971
972 *** The following access methods are discontinued: "ssh1_old",
973 "ssh2_old", "scp1_old", "scp2_old", "imap", "imaps" and "fish".
974
975 *** The user option `remote-file-name-inhibit-cache' controls whether
976 remote file attributes are cached for better performance.
977
978 *** The option `ange-ftp-binary-file-name-regexp' has changed its
979 default value to "".
980
981 *** Handlers for `file-selinux-context' and `set-file-selinux-context'
982 for remote machines which support SELinux.
983
984 ** New function `url-queue-retrieve', which behaves like url-retrieve,
985 but with limits (`url-queue-parallel-processes', `url-queue-timeout') on
986 the degree of parallelism.
987
988 ** VC and related modes
989
990 *** Support for pulling on distributed version control systems.
991 The command C-x v + (`vc-pull') runs a "pull" operation, if it is
992 supported (currently with Bzr, Git, and Mercurial), to update the
993 current branch and working tree. A prefix argument means to prompt
994 the user for specifics, e.g. a pull location.
995
996 *** `vc-update' is now an alias for `vc-pull'.
997
998 *** Support for merging on distributed version control systems.
999 The command C-x v m (`vc-merge') now runs a "merge" operation, if it
1000 is supported (currently with Bzr, Git, and Mercurial), to merge
1001 changes from another branch into the current one. It prompts for
1002 specifics, e.g. a merge source.
1003
1004 *** New option `vc-revert-show-diff' controls whether `vc-revert'
1005 shows a diff while querying the user. It defaults to t.
1006
1007 *** Log entries in some Log View buffers can be toggled to display a
1008 longer description by typing RET (log-view-toggle-entry-display).
1009 This is currently supported for Bzr, Git, and Mercurial (to support
1010 another backend, define a `log-view-expanded-log-entry-function').
1011 In the Log View buffers made by C-x v L (`vc-print-root-log'), you can
1012 use this to display the full log entry for the revision at point.
1013
1014 *** New command `vc-ediff' allows visual comparison of two revisions
1015 of a file similar to `vc-diff', but using ediff backend.
1016
1017 *** The option `vc-initial-comment' was removed in Emacs 23.2, but
1018 this was not advertised at the time.
1019
1020 *** `vc-toggle-read-only' is an obsolete alias for `toggle-read-only'.
1021 Since Emacs 23, it has done the same thing as `toggle-read-only', but
1022 this was not advertised at the time.
1023
1024 ** Obsolete modes
1025
1026 *** abbrevlist.el
1027
1028 *** erc-hecomplete.el (use erc-pcomplete.el instead)
1029
1030 *** partial-completion-mode (complete.el) is obsolete.
1031 You can get a comparable behavior with:
1032 (setq completion-styles '(partial-completion initials))
1033 (setq completion-pcm-complete-word-inserts-delimiters t)
1034
1035 *** pc-mode.el is obsolete (CUA mode is much more comprehensive).
1036
1037 *** pgg is obsolete (use EasyPG instead).
1038
1039 *** sregex.el is obsolete, since rx.el is a strict superset.
1040
1041 *** s-region.el and pc-select.el are obsolete.
1042 They are superseded by shift-select-mode, enabled by default since 23.1.
1043
1044 *** vc-mcvs.el is obsolete (for lack of a maintainer).
1045
1046 ** Miscellaneous
1047
1048 *** The Landmark game is now invoked with `landmark', not `lm'.
1049 Its functions and variables have been similarly renamed.
1050
1051 *** In `ido-file-completion-map', C-v is no longer bound to `ido-toggle-vc'.
1052 (This interfered with cua-mode.)
1053
1054 *** f90.el has some support for Fortran 2008 syntax.
1055
1056 *** `copyright-fix-years' can optionally convert consecutive years to ranges.
1057
1058 *** New command `nato-region' converts text to NATO phonetic alphabet.
1059
1060 \f
1061 * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 24.1
1062
1063 ** Occur Edit mode applies edits made in *Occur* buffers to the
1064 original buffers. It is bound to "e" in Occur mode.
1065
1066 ** New global minor mode electric-pair-mode.
1067 When enabled, typing an open parenthesis automatically inserts the
1068 matching closing one.
1069
1070 ** New global minor mode electric-indent-mode.
1071 When enabled, typing certain characters triggers reindentation.
1072 Major modes wishing to use this can set electric-indent-chars or
1073 electric-indent-functions.
1074
1075 ** New global minor mode electric-layout-mode.
1076 When enabled, typing certain characters automatically inserts newlines.
1077 Major modes wishing to use this can set electric-layout-rules.
1078
1079 ** tabulated-list.el provides a generic major mode for tabulated data,
1080 from which other modes can be derived.
1081
1082 ** pcase.el provides the ML-style pattern matching macro `pcase'.
1083
1084 ** secrets.el is an implementation of the Secret Service API, an
1085 interface to password managers like GNOME Keyring or KDE Wallet. The
1086 Secret Service API requires D-Bus for communication. The command
1087 `secrets-show-secrets' offers a buffer with a visualization of the
1088 secrets.
1089
1090 ** notifications.el provides an implementation of the Desktop
1091 Notifications API. It requires D-Bus for communication.
1092
1093 ** soap-client.el supports access to SOAP web services from Emacs.
1094 soap-inspect.el is an interactive inspector for SOAP WSDL structures.
1095
1096 ** New generic mode, xmodmap-generic-mode, for xmodmap files.
1097
1098 ** New emacs-lock.el package.
1099 The previous version has been moved to obsolete/old-emacs-lock.el.
1100 Now, there is a proper minor mode `emacs-lock-mode'. Protection
1101 against exiting Emacs and killing the buffer can be set separately.
1102 The mechanism for automatically turning off protection for buffers
1103 with dead inferior processes has been generalized.
1104
1105 \f
1106 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 24.1
1107
1108 ** Passing a nil argument to a minor mode function call now ENABLES
1109 the minor mode unconditionally. This is so that you can write e.g.
1110
1111 (add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'foo-mode)
1112
1113 to enable foo-mode in Text mode buffers, removing the need for
1114 `turn-on-foo-mode' style functions. This affects all mode commands
1115 defined by `define-minor-mode'. If called interactively, the mode
1116 command still toggles the minor mode.
1117
1118 ** The return value of `backup-buffer' has changed.
1119 It is now a list of three elements, where the second element is a list
1120 describing the original file's SELinux context. If Emacs or the
1121 system lacks SELinux support, the context list is (nil nil nil nil).
1122 See "Basic SELinux support" above, under "Changes in Emacs 24.1".
1123
1124 ** `char-direction-table' and the `char-direction' function were deleted.
1125 They were buggy and inferior to the new support of bidirectional
1126 editing introduced in Emacs 24. If you need the bidirectional
1127 properties of a character, use `get-char-code-property' with the last
1128 argument `bidi-class'.
1129
1130 ** `copy-directory' now copies the source directory as a subdirectory
1131 of the target directory, if the latter is an existing directory. The
1132 new optional arg COPY-CONTENTS, if non-nil, makes the function copy
1133 the contents directly into a pre-existing target directory.
1134
1135 ** For mouse click input events in the text area, the Y pixel
1136 coordinate in the POSITION list now counts from the top of the text
1137 area, excluding any header line. Previously, it counted from the top
1138 of the header line.
1139
1140 ** Support for "old-style" backquotes, obsolete for 10+ years, has
1141 been further reduced. Now a backquote not followed by a space is
1142 always treated as a "new-style" backquote. Please remove all
1143 "old-style" backquotes from your code. If your code uses backquotes
1144 as documented in the Elisp manual, and compiles without warning, then
1145 you have nothing to do in this regard. Code not following the
1146 appropriate conventions may fail to compile.
1147
1148 The most common cause of trouble seems to be an old-style backquote
1149 followed by a newline. Another cause of trouble is vector notation
1150 for key sequence notation: instead of [(control ,)] and [(control ')],
1151 you should write [(control ?,)] and [(control ?')], which will work in
1152 older Emacsen too.
1153
1154 ** The macro `eval-at-startup' was removed in Emacs 23.2, but this
1155 was not advertised at the time. The function `custom-initialize-delay'
1156 replaced all known uses.
1157
1158 ** `view-buffer' now treats special mode-class in the same way that
1159 `view-file' has since Emacs 22 (i.e. it won't enable View mode if the
1160 major mode is special).
1161
1162 ** Menu and tool bar changes
1163
1164 *** During startup, Emacs no longer adds entries for `menu-bar-lines'
1165 and `tool-bar-lines' to `default-frame-alist' and `initial-frame-alist'.
1166 With these alist entries omitted, `make-frame' checks the value of the
1167 variable `menu-bar-mode'/`tool-bar-mode' to determine whether to create
1168 a menu-bar or tool-bar, respectively. If the alist entries are added,
1169 they override the value of `menu-bar-mode'/`tool-bar-mode'.
1170
1171 *** The menu bar bindings's caches are not used any more.
1172 Use (where-is-internal <def> nil t) instead.
1173
1174 ** Regions created by mouse dragging are now normal active regions,
1175 similar to those created by shift-selection (see Selection changes
1176 above). In previous Emacs versions, these regions were delineated by
1177 `mouse-drag-overlay'; that variable has been removed.
1178
1179 ** The fourth argument of `filter-buffer-substring' has been removed.
1180 If you want to remove text properties from the final result, simply
1181 pass the result through substring-no-properties.
1182
1183 ** cl.el no longer provides `cl-19'.
1184
1185 ** The following obsolete functions and aliases have been removed
1186 (the appropriate new function is given in parentheses; "not needed"
1187 means you can just remove all calls to the function in question):
1188
1189 *** `comint-kill-output' (`comint-delete-output')
1190 *** `decompose-composite-char' (`char-to-string')
1191 *** `outline-visible' (`outline-invisible-p')
1192 *** `internal-find-face' (`facep')
1193 *** `internal-get-face' (`facep and check-face')
1194 *** `frame-update-faces' (not needed)
1195 *** `frame-update-face-colors' (`frame-set-background-mode')
1196 *** `x-frob-font-weight' and `x-frob-font-slant' (`make-face-*' functions)
1197 *** `x-make-font-bold and x-make-font-demibold (`make-face-bold')
1198 *** `x-make-font-italic' and `x-make-font-oblique' (`make-face-italic')
1199 *** `x-make-font-bold-italic' (`make-face-bold-italic')
1200 *** `x-make-font-unbold' (`make-face-unbold')
1201 *** `x-make-font-unitalic' (`make-face-unitalic')
1202 *** `mldrag-drag-mode-line' (`mouse-drag-mode-line')
1203 *** `mldrag-drag-vertical-line' (`mouse-drag-vertical-line')
1204 *** `iswitchb-default-keybindings' (`iswitchb-mode')
1205 *** `char-bytes' (== 1)
1206 *** `isearch-return-char' (`isearch-printing-char')
1207 *** `make-local-hook' (not needed)
1208 *** `set-screen-height' (`set-frame-height')
1209 *** `set-screen-width' (`set-frame-width')
1210
1211 ** The following obsolete variables and varaliases have been removed
1212 (the appropriate new variable is given in parentheses):
1213
1214 *** `checkdoc-minor-keymap' (`checkdoc-minor-mode-map')
1215 *** `vc-header-alist' (`vc-BACKEND-header')
1216 *** `directory-sep-char' (== ?/)
1217 *** `font-lock-defaults-alist' (`font-lock-defaults')
1218 *** `e' (`float-e').
1219
1220 ** The following obsolete files were removed:
1221 sc.el, x-menu.el, rnews.el, rnewspost.el
1222
1223 ** The format of the finder-inf.el file has changed, since the Finder
1224 mechanism is now based on the package system. The variable
1225 `finder-package-info' is replaced by `package--builtins' and
1226 `finder-keywords-hash'.
1227
1228 ** When generating autoloads, `update-directory-autoloads' no longer
1229 assumes every inspected file is in your `load-path'. It instead
1230 generates relative names according to the current `load-path'.
1231
1232 \f
1233 * Lisp changes in Emacs 24.1
1234
1235 ** Code can now use lexical scoping by default instead of dynamic scoping.
1236 The `lexical-binding' variable enables lexical scoping for local
1237 variables. It is typically set via a file-local variable in the first
1238 line of the file, in which case it applies to all the code in that
1239 file.
1240
1241 *** `eval' takes a new optional argument `lexical' to choose the new lexical
1242 binding instead of the old dynamic binding mode.
1243
1244 *** Lexically scoped interpreted functions are represented with a new form
1245 of function value which looks like (closure ENV ARGS &rest BODY).
1246
1247 *** New macro `letrec' to define recursive local functions.
1248
1249 *** `defvar' and `defconst' now mark the variable as special (dynamic).
1250 So do `defcustom' and other forms that call `defvar' as a subroutine.
1251
1252 *** New function `special-variable-p' to check whether a variable is
1253 declared as dynamically bound.
1254
1255 *** The form ((lambda ...) ...) is deprecated.
1256
1257 ** An Emacs Lisp testing tool is now included.
1258 Emacs Lisp developers can use this tool to write automated tests for
1259 their code. See the ERT info manual for details.
1260
1261 ** Changes for bidirectional display and editing
1262
1263 *** New function `current-bidi-paragraph-direction'.
1264 This returns the base direction of the paragraph at point.
1265
1266 *** New function `bidi-string-mark-left-to-right'.
1267 Given a string containing characters from right-to-left scripts, this
1268 function returns another string which can be safely inserted into a
1269 buffer, such that any following text will be always displayed to the
1270 right of that string. (This works by appending an invisible Unicode
1271 "LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK" character if the argument string might need it.)
1272
1273 This is useful when the buffer has overall left-to-right paragraph
1274 direction and you need to insert a string whose contents are not known
1275 in advance, without disrupting the layout of the line.
1276
1277 ** Window changes
1278
1279 *** Window tree functions are accessible in Elisp.
1280 Functions are provided to return the parent, siblings or child windows
1281 of any window including internal windows (windows not associated with a
1282 buffer) in the window tree.
1283
1284 **** New function `window-valid-p' gives non-nil for live and internal
1285 windows.
1286
1287 **** Window manipulation can deal with internal windows.
1288 Many window handling functions like `split-window', `delete-window', or
1289 `delete-other-windows' as well as the window resizing functions can now
1290 act on any window including internal ones.
1291
1292 *** window-total-height/-width vs window-body-height/-width.
1293 The function `window-height' has been renamed to `window-total-height'
1294 and `window-width' has been renamed to `window-body-width'. The old
1295 names are provided as aliases. Two new functions `window-total-width'
1296 and `window-body-height' are provided.
1297
1298 *** Window parameters specific to window handling functions.
1299 For each window you can specify a parameter to override the default
1300 behavior of a number of functions like `split-window', `delete-window'
1301 and `delete-other-windows'. The variable `ignore-window-parameters'
1302 allows to ignore processing such parameters.
1303
1304 *** New semantics of third argument of `split-window'.
1305 The third argument of `split-window' has been renamed to SIDE and can be
1306 set to any of the values 'below, 'right, 'above, or 'left to make the
1307 new window appear on the corresponding side of the window that shall be
1308 split. Any other value of SIDE will cause `split-window' to split the
1309 window into two side-by-side windows as before.
1310
1311 *** Window resizing functions.
1312 A new standard function for resizing windows called `window-resize' has
1313 been introduced. This and all other functions for resizing windows no
1314 longer delete any windows when they become too small.
1315
1316 *** Deleting the selected window now selects the most recently selected
1317 live window on that frame instead.
1318
1319 *** `adjust-window-trailing-edge' adjustments.
1320 `adjust-window-trailing-edge' can now deal with fixed-size windows and
1321 is able to resize other windows if a window adjacent to the trailing
1322 edge cannot be shrunk any more. This makes its behavior more similar to
1323 that of Emacs 21 without compromising, however, its inability to delete
1324 windows which was introduced in Emacs 22.
1325
1326 *** Window-local buffer lists.
1327 Windows now have local buffer lists. This means that removing a buffer
1328 from display in a window will preferably show the buffer previously
1329 shown in that window with its previous window-start and window-point
1330 positions. This also means that the same buffer may be automatically
1331 shown twice even if it already appears in another window.
1332
1333 *** `switch-to-buffer' has a new optional argument FORCE-SAME-WINDOW,
1334 which if non-nil requires the buffer to be displayed in the currently
1335 selected window, signaling an error otherwise. If nil, another window
1336 can be used, e.g. if the selected one is strongly dedicated.
1337
1338 *** `split-window-vertically' and `split-window-horizontally' renamed
1339 to `split-window-below' and `split-window-right' respectively.
1340 The old names are kept as aliases.
1341
1342 *** Display actions
1343
1344 **** The second arg to `display-buffer' and `pop-to-buffer' is now
1345 named ACTION, and takes a display action of the same form as
1346 `display-buffer-base-action' (see Changes, above). A non-nil,
1347 non-list value is treated specially, as the old meaning.
1348
1349 **** New variable `display-buffer-overriding-action'.
1350
1351 **** The procedure of `display-buffer' etc. to choose a window is
1352 determined by combining `display-buffer-overriding-action',
1353 `display-buffer-alist', the ACTION arg, `display-buffer-base-action',
1354 and `display-buffer-fallback-action'. The second and fourth of these
1355 are user-customizable variables.
1356
1357 See the docstring of `display-buffer' for details.
1358
1359 *** New functions `window-state-get' and `window-state-put'.
1360 These functions allow to save and restore the state of an arbitrary
1361 frame or window as an Elisp object.
1362
1363 ** Completion
1364
1365 *** New variable `completion-extra-properties' used to specify extra
1366 properties of the current completion:
1367 - :annotate-function, same as the old completion-annotate-function.
1368 - :exit-function, function to call after completion took place.
1369
1370 *** Functions on `completion-at-point-functions' can return any of the
1371 properties valid for `completion-extra-properties'.
1372
1373 *** `completion-annotate-function' is obsolete.
1374
1375 *** New `metadata' method for completion tables. The metadata thus returned
1376 can specify various details of the data returned by `all-completions':
1377 - `category' is the kind of objects returned (e.g., `buffer', `file', ...),
1378 used to select a style in completion-category-overrides.
1379 - `annotation-function' to add annotations in *Completions*.
1380 - `display-sort-function' to specify how to sort entries in *Completions*.
1381 - `cycle-sort-function' to specify how to sort entries when cycling.
1382
1383 *** `minibuffer-local-filename-must-match-map' is not used any more.
1384 Instead, the bindings in `minibuffer-local-filename-completion-map'
1385 are combined with `minibuffer-local-must-match-map'.
1386
1387 *** New variable `completing-read-function' allows overriding the
1388 behavior of `completing-read'.
1389
1390 ** `glyphless-char-display' can now distinguish between graphical and
1391 text terminal display, via a char-table entry that is a cons cell.
1392
1393 ** `pre-command-hook'/`post-command-hook' are not reset to nil on error.
1394 Instead, the offending function is removed.
1395
1396 ** New hook types
1397
1398 *** New function `run-hook-wrapped' for running an abnormal hook by
1399 passing the hook functions as arguments to a "wrapping" function.
1400 Like `run-hook-with-args-until-success', it stops at the first
1401 non-nil return value.
1402
1403 *** New macro `with-wrapper-hook' for running an abnormal hook as a
1404 set of "wrapping" filters, similar to around advice.
1405 (A version of this macro was actually added in Emacs 23.2 but was not
1406 advertised at the time.)
1407
1408 ** Debugger changes
1409
1410 *** New macro `condition-case-unless-debug' (this was actually added in
1411 Emacs 23.1 as condition-case-no-debug, but not advertised)
1412
1413 *** The macro `with-demoted-errors' was added in Emacs 23.1, but not advertised.
1414
1415 *** Variable `stack-trace-on-error' removed.
1416
1417 *** The debugger can now "continue" from an error, which means it will
1418 jump to the error handler as if the debugger had not been invoked
1419 instead of jumping all the way to the top-level.
1420
1421 *** Set `debug-on-event' to enter the debugger on events like SIGUSR1.
1422 This can be useful when `inhibit-quit' is set.
1423
1424 ** The new function `server-eval-at' allows evaluation of Lisp forms on
1425 named Emacs server instances.
1426
1427 ** `call-process' and `call-process-region' allow a `(:file "file")' spec
1428 to redirect STDOUT to a file.
1429
1430 ** The function `format-time-string' now supports the %N directive,
1431 for higher-resolution time stamps.
1432
1433 ** New input reading functions
1434
1435 *** New function `read-char-choice' reads a restricted set of
1436 characters, discarding any inputs not inside the set.
1437
1438 *** The command `read-color' now requires a match for a color name
1439 or RGB triplet, instead of signaling an error if the user provides
1440 invalid input.
1441
1442 **** `facemenu-read-color' is now an alias for `read-color'.
1443
1444 ** `image-library-alist' is renamed to `dynamic-library-alist'.
1445 The variable is now used to load all kind of supported dynamic libraries,
1446 not just image libraries. The previous name is still available as an
1447 obsolete alias.
1448
1449 ** Syntax parsing changes
1450
1451 *** New variable `syntax-propertize-function'.
1452 This replaces `font-lock-syntactic-keywords' which is now obsolete.
1453 This allows syntax-table properties to be set independently from font-lock:
1454 just call syntax-propertize to make sure the text is propertized.
1455 Together with this new variable come a new hook
1456 syntax-propertize-extend-region-functions, as well as two helper functions:
1457 syntax-propertize-via-font-lock to reuse old font-lock-syntactic-keywords
1458 as-is; and syntax-propertize-rules which provides a new way to specify
1459 syntactic rules.
1460
1461 *** Syntax tables support a new "comment style c" additionally to style b.
1462
1463 ** New hook `post-self-insert-hook', run after `self-insert-command'.
1464
1465 ** frame-local variables cannot be let-bound any more.
1466
1467 ** Major and minor mode changes
1468
1469 *** `set-auto-mode' now respects mode: local variables at the end of files,
1470 as well as those in the -*- line.
1471
1472 *** `prog-mode' is a new major mode from which programming modes
1473 should be derived.
1474
1475 **** `prog-mode-hook' can be used to enable features for programming
1476 modes, e.g. (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook 'flyspell-prog-mode) to enable
1477 on-the-fly spell checking for comments and strings.
1478
1479 *** New hook `change-major-mode-after-body-hook', run by
1480 `run-mode-hooks' just before any other mode hooks.
1481
1482 *** Enabled globalized minor modes can be disabled in specific major modes.
1483 If the global mode is global-FOO-mode, then run (FOO-mode -1) in the
1484 major mode's hook, where FOO-mode toggles the mode on a per-buffer basis.
1485
1486 *** `define-minor-mode' accepts new keywords :variable, :after-hook.
1487
1488 ** File-handling changes
1489
1490 *** `delete-file' and `delete-directory' now accept optional arg TRASH.
1491 Trashing is performed if TRASH and `delete-by-moving-to-trash' are
1492 both non-nil. Interactively, TRASH defaults to t, unless a prefix
1493 argument is supplied (see Trash changes, above).
1494
1495 *** New file predicates: `file-equal-p', `file-in-directory-p'.
1496
1497 ** Tool-bars can display separators.
1498 Tool-bar separators are handled like menu separators in menu-bar maps,
1499 i.e. via menu entries of the form `(menu-item "--")'.
1500
1501 ** Image API
1502
1503 *** Animated images support (currently animated gifs only).
1504
1505 **** `image-animated-p' returns non-nil if an image can be animated.
1506
1507 **** `image-animate' animates a supplied image spec.
1508
1509 **** `image-animate-timer' returns the timer object for an image that
1510 is being animated.
1511
1512 *** `image-extension-data' has been renamed to `image-metadata'.
1513 The old name is an obsolete alias to the new one.
1514
1515 *** Image mode can view any image type that ImageMagick supports.
1516 This requires Emacs to be built with ImageMagick support.
1517
1518 **** New function `imagemagick-types', defined if ImageMagick support
1519 is enabled, returns a list of image file extensions that your
1520 ImageMagick installation supports.
1521
1522 **** New function `imagemagick-register-types' enables ImageMagick
1523 image types in Image mode and in `create-image' and other helper
1524 functions.
1525
1526 **** New option `imagemagick-types-inhibit' excludes certain
1527 ImageMagick image types from `imagemagick-register-types'.
1528
1529 **** With ImageMagick support, there are extra Image mode commands to
1530 resize and rotate images: `image-transform-fit-to-height',
1531 `image-transform-fit-to-width', `image-transform-set-rotation', and
1532 `image-transform-set-scale'.
1533
1534 ** `compose-mail' now accepts an optional 8th arg, RETURN-ACTION, and
1535 passes it to the mail user agent function. This argument specifies an
1536 action for returning to the caller after finishing with the mail. For
1537 example, this is used by Rmail to optionally delete a mail window.
1538
1539 ** XML and HTML parsing
1540 If Emacs is compiled with libxml2 support, there are two new
1541 functions: `libxml-parse-html-region' (which parses "real world" HTML)
1542 and `libxml-parse-xml-region' (which parses XML). Both return an
1543 Emacs Lisp parse tree.
1544
1545 ** Networking and encryption changes
1546
1547 *** `open-network-stream' can now be used to open an encrypted stream.
1548 It now accepts an optional `:type' parameter for initiating a TLS
1549 connection, directly or via STARTTLS. To do STARTTLS, additional
1550 parameters (`:end-of-command', `:success', `:capabilities-command')
1551 must also be supplied.
1552
1553 *** New library gnutls.el.
1554 The new function `gnutls-available-p' returns non-nil if Emacs is
1555 built with GnuTLS support. The main entry points are
1556 `open-gnutls-stream' and `gnutls-negotiate'. It's easiest to use
1557 these functions through `open-network-stream', because that can
1558 upgrade connections through STARTTLS opportunistically or use plain
1559 SSL, depending on your needs. For debugging, set `gnutls-log-level'
1560 greater than 0.
1561
1562 *** New primitive `secure-hash' that supports many secure hash algorithms:
1563 md5, sha1, sha2, sha224, sha256, sha384, and sha512. The lisp library
1564 sha1.el has been removed. The `sha1' feature is provided by default.
1565
1566 ** Isearch
1567
1568 *** New hook `isearch-update-post-hook' that runs in `isearch-update'.
1569
1570 ** Progress reporters can now "spin".
1571 The MIN-VALUE and MAX-VALUE arguments of `make-progress-reporter' can
1572 now be nil, or omitted. This makes a "non-numeric" reporter. Each
1573 time you call `progress-reporter-update' on that progress reporter,
1574 with a nil or omitted VALUE argument, the reporter message is
1575 displayed with a "spinning bar".
1576
1577 ** New variable `revert-buffer-in-progress-p' is true while a buffer is
1578 being reverted, even if the buffer has a local `revert-buffer-function'.
1579
1580 ** New variables `delayed-warnings-list' and `delayed-warnings-hook'.
1581 If delayed-warnings-list is non-nil, the command loop calls
1582 `delayed-warnings-hook' after `post-command-hook'. At present, this
1583 is only used by Emacs on some platforms to display warnings during
1584 startup, which might otherwise not be noticed. This uses the
1585 functions `display-delayed-warnings' and `collapse-delayed-warnings'.
1586
1587 ** rx.el has a new `group-n' construct for explicitly numbered groups.
1588
1589 ** New function `make-composed-keymap' that constructs a new keymap
1590 from multiple input maps. You can use this to make a keymap that
1591 inherits from multiple maps, eg:
1592 (set-keymap-parent newmap (make-composed-keymap othermap parent))
1593
1594 ** New function `string-prefix-p'.
1595 (This was actually added in Emacs 23.2 but was not advertised at the time.)
1596
1597 ** New reader macro ## that stands for the empty symbol.
1598 This means that the empty symbol can now be read back. Also, #: by itself
1599 (when not immediately followed by a possible symbol character) stands for
1600 an empty uninterned symbol.
1601
1602 ** New math functions `isnan', `copysign', `frexp', `ldexp'.
1603
1604 ** The following functions and variables are obsolete:
1605
1606 *** `tooltip-use-echo-area' is obsolete.
1607 Rather than setting this to t, disable Tooltip mode instead.
1608
1609 *** buffer-substring-filters is obsolete.
1610 Use `filter-buffer-substring-functions' instead.
1611
1612 *** `byte-compile-disable-print-circle' is obsolete.
1613
1614 *** `deferred-action-list' and `deferred-action-function' are obsolete.
1615 Use `post-command-hook' instead.
1616
1617 *** `font-lock-maximum-size' is obsolete.
1618
1619 \f
1620 * Changes in Emacs 24.1 on non-free operating systems
1621
1622 ** On MS Windows, Emacs warns when using the obsolete init file _emacs,
1623 and also when HOME is set to C:\ by default.
1624
1625 ** New configure.bat options
1626
1627 *** --enable-checking builds Emacs with extra runtime checks.
1628
1629 *** --distfiles specifies files to be included in binary distribution.
1630
1631 *** --without-gnutls disables automatic GnuTLS detection.
1632
1633 *** --lib for general library linkage, works with the USER_LIBS build variable.
1634
1635 ** New make target `dist' to create binary distribution for MS Windows.
1636
1637 ** The Lisp function `w32-default-color-map' is now obsolete.
1638 (It is only used internally in the Emacs C code.)
1639
1640 ** Customize ns-auto-hide-menu-bar to have the menu-bar hidden, but
1641 reappear on mouse-over. (Requires OS X 10.6 or later.)
1642
1643 ** On Mac OS X, dragging a file into Emacs visits the file, like on
1644 other platforms, rather than inserting its contents into the buffer.
1645
1646 \f
1647 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
1648 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1649
1650 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1651 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1652 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1653 (at your option) any later version.
1654
1655 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1656 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1657 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1658 GNU General Public License for more details.
1659
1660 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1661 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1662
1663 \f
1664 Local variables:
1665 mode: outline
1666 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
1667 end: