Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
For older news, see the file ONEWS
+You can narrow news to the specific version by calling
+`view-emacs-news' with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.
Temporary note:
+++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
\f
* Installation Changes in Emacs 21.4
+** Emacs includes now support for loading image libraries on demand.
+(Currently this feature is only used on MS Windows.) You can configure
+the supported image types and their associated dynamic libraries by
+setting the variable `image-library-alist'.
+
---
** A Bulgarian translation of the Emacs Tutorial is available.
\f
* Changes in Emacs 21.4
+** Passing resources on the command line now works on MS Windows.
+You can use --xrm to pass resource settings to Emacs, overriding any
+existing values. For example:
+
+ emacs --xrm "Emacs.Background:red" --xrm "Emacs.Geometry:100x20"
+
+will start up Emacs on an initial frame of 100x20 with red background,
+irrespective of geometry or background setting on the Windows registry.
+
+** New features in evaluation commands
+
++++
+*** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) called on defface reinitializes
+the face to the value specified in the defface expression.
+
+*** Typing C-x C-e twice prints the value of the integer result
+in additional formats (octal, hexadecimal, character) specified
+by the new function `eval-expression-print-format'. The same
+function also defines the result format for `eval-expression' (M-:),
+`eval-print-last-sexp' (C-j) and some edebug evaluation functions.
+
+** New input method chinese-sisheng for inputting Chinese Pinyin
+characters.
+
+** New command quail-show-key shows what key (or key sequence) to type
+in the current input method to input a character at point.
+
+** Convenient commands to switch buffers in a cyclic order are C-x <left>
+(prev-buffer) and C-x <right> (next-buffer).
+
+** Commands winner-redo and winner-undo, from winner.el, are now bound to
+C-c <left> and C-c <right>, respectively. This is an incompatible change.
+
+** Help commands `describe-function' and `describe-key' now show function
+arguments in lowercase italics on displays that support it. To change the
+default, customize face `help-argument-name' or redefine the function
+`help-default-arg-highlight'.
+
+---
+** The comint prompt can now be made read-only, using the new user
+option `comint-prompt-read-only'. This is not enabled by default,
+except in IELM buffers. The read-only status of IELM prompts can be
+controlled with the new user option `ielm-prompt-read-only', which
+overrides `comint-prompt-read-only'.
+
+The new commands `comint-kill-whole-line' and `comint-kill-region'
+support editing comint buffers with read-only prompts.
+
+`comint-kill-whole-line' is like `kill-whole-line', but ignores both
+read-only and field properties. Hence, it will always kill entire
+lines, including any prompts.
+
+`comint-kill-region' is like `kill-region', except that it ignores
+read-only properties, if it is safe to do so. This means that if any
+part of a prompt is deleted, then the entire prompt must be deleted
+and that all prompts must stay at the beginning of a line. If this is
+not the case, then `comint-kill-region' behaves just like
+`kill-region' if read-only are involved: it copies the text to the
+kill-ring, but does not delete it.
+
+** You can now use next-error (C-x `) and previous-error to advance to
+the next/previous matching line found by M-x occur.
+
+** Telnet will now prompt you for a port number with C-u M-x telnet.
+
++++
** New command line option -Q.
This is like using -q --no-site-file, but in addition it also disables
the stroke directly to a string to insert. This is convenient for
using strokes as an input method.
++++
+** Desktop package
+
+*** Desktop saving is now a minor mode, desktop-save-mode. Variable
+desktop-enable is obsolete. Customize desktop-save-mode to enable desktop
+saving.
+
+*** Buffers are saved in the desktop file in the same order as that in the
+buffer list.
+
+*** New commands:
+ - desktop-revert reverts to the last loaded desktop.
+ - desktop-change-dir kills current desktop and loads a new.
+ - desktop-save-in-desktop-dir saves desktop in the directory from which
+ it was loaded.
+
+*** New customizable variables:
+ - desktop-save. Determins whether the desktop should be saved when it is
+ killed.
+ - desktop-file-name-format.
+ - desktop-path. List of directories in which to lookup the desktop file.
+ - desktop-locals-to-save.
+ - desktop-globals-to-clear.
+ - desktop-clear-preserve-buffers-regexp.
+
+*** New command line option --no-desktop
+
+*** New hooks:
+ - desktop-after-read-hook run after a desktop is loaded.
+ - desktop-no-desktop-file-hook run when no desktop file is found.
+
---
** The saveplace.el package now filters out unreadable files.
When you exit Emacs, the saved positions in visited files no longer
your .emacs will no longer establish the default highlighting -- Use
`sql-product' to accomplish this.
+ANSI keywords are always highlighted.
+
*** The function `sql-add-product-keywords' can be used to add
font-lock rules to the product specific rules. For example, to have
all identifiers ending in "_t" under MS SQLServer treated as a type,
you would use the following line in your .emacs file:
(sql-add-product-keywords 'ms
- '("\\<\\w+_t\\>" . font-lock-type-face))
+ '(("\\<\\w+_t\\>" . font-lock-type-face)))
*** Oracle support includes keyword highlighting for Oracle 9i. Most
SQL and PL/SQL keywords are implemented. SQL*Plus commands are
called with the -E command line argument to use the operating system
credentials to authenticate the user.
+*** Postgres support is enhanced.
+Keyword highlighting of Postgres 7.3 is implemented. Prompting for
+the username and the pgsql `-U' option is added.
+
+*** MySQL support is enhanced.
+Keyword higlighting of MySql 4.0 is implemented.
+
*** Imenu support has been enhanced to locate tables, views, indexes,
packages, procedures, functions, triggers, sequences, rules, and
defaults.
** New command `kill-whole-line' kills an entire line at once.
By default, it is bound to C-S-<backspace>.
+** New commands to operate on pairs of open and close characters:
+`insert-pair', `delete-pair', `raise-sexp'.
+
+** A prefix argument of C-M-q in Emacs Lisp mode pretty-printifies the
+list starting after point.
+
** Dired mode:
*** New faces dired-header, dired-mark, dired-marked, dired-flagged,
dired-ignored, dired-directory, dired-symlink, dired-warning
introduced for Dired mode instead of font-lock faces.
-*** New Dired command `dired-compare-directories' to mark files with
-different file attributes in two dired buffers.
+*** New Dired command `dired-compare-directories' marks files
+with different file attributes in two dired buffers.
+
++++
+*** New Dired command `dired-do-touch' (bound to T) changes timestamps
+of marked files with the value entered in the minibuffer.
+++
*** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now
what external viewers to use and when.
*** In Dired, the w command now copies the current line's file name
-into the kill ring.
+into the kill ring. With a zero prefix arg, copies absolute file names.
+
++++
+** Dired-x:
+
+*** Omitting files is now a minor mode, dired-omit-mode. The mode toggling
+command is bound to M-o. A new command dired-mark-omitted, bound to M-O,
+marks omitted files. The variable dired-omit-files-p is obsoleted, use the
+mode toggling function instead.
** Info mode:
+
+*** A numeric prefix argument of `info' selects an Info buffer
+with the number appended to the *info* buffer name.
+
+*** New command `Info-history' (bound to L) displays a menu of visited nodes.
+
+*** New command `Info-toc' (bound to T) creates a node with table of contents
+from the tree structure of menus of the current Info file.
+
+*** New command `info-apropos' searches the indices of the known
+Info files on your system for a string, and builds a menu of the
+possible matches.
+
+*** New command `Info-copy-current-node-name' (bound to w) copies
+the current Info node name into the kill ring. With a zero prefix
+arg, puts the node name inside the `info' function call.
+
+*** New command `Info-search-case-sensitively' (bound to S).
+
+*** New command `Info-search-next' (unbound) repeats the last search
+without prompting for a new search string.
+
+*** New face `info-xref-visited' distinguishes visited nodes from unvisited
+and a new option `Info-fontify-visited-nodes' to control this.
+
+*** http and ftp links in Info are now operational: they look like cross
+references and following them calls `browse-url'.
+
+++
*** Info now hides node names in menus and cross references by default.
If you prefer the old behavior, you can set the new user option
`Info-hide-note-references' to nil.
-*** The new command `info-apropos' searches the indices of the known
-Info files on your system for a string, and builds a menu of the
-possible matches.
+*** Images in Info pages are supported.
+Info pages show embedded images, in Emacs frames with image support.
+Info documentation that includes images, processed with makeinfo
+version 4.7 or newer, compiles to Info pages with embedded images.
+++
*** The default value for `Info-scroll-prefer-subnodes' is now nil.
'sql-sqlite'.
** BibTeX mode:
+*** The new command bibtex-entry-update (bound to C-c C-u) updates
+an existing BibTeX entry.
*** New `bibtex-entry-format' option `required-fields', enabled by default.
*** bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries can take values `plain',
`crossref', and `entry-class' which control the sorting scheme used
latter is used by GNU locales.
** The utf-8/16 coding systems have been enhanced.
-By default, untranslatable utf-8 sequences (mostly representing CJK
-characters) are simply composed into single quasi-characters. User
-option `utf-translate-cjk' arranges to translate many utf-8 CJK
-character sequences into real Emacs characters in a similar way to the
-Mule-UCS system. This uses significant space, so is not the default.
+By default, untranslatable utf-8 sequences are simply composed into
+single quasi-characters. User option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' (it is
+turned on by default) arranges to translate many utf-8 CJK character
+sequences into real Emacs characters in a similar way to the Mule-UCS
+system. As this loads a fairly big data on demand, people who are not
+interested in CJK characters may want to customize it to nil.
You can augment/amend the CJK translation via hash tables
`ucs-mule-cjk-to-unicode' and `ucs-unicode-to-mule-cjk'. The utf-8
coding system now also encodes characters from most of Emacs's
+++
** The new command `describe-char' (C-u C-x =) pops up a buffer with
description various information about a character, including its
-encodings and syntax, its text properties, overlays, and widgets at
-point. You can get more information about some of them, by clicking
-on mouse-sensitive areas or moving there and pressing RET.
+encodings and syntax, its text properties, how to input, overlays, and
+widgets at point. You can get more information about some of them, by
+clicking on mouse-sensitive areas or moving there and pressing RET.
+++
** The new command `multi-occur' is just like `occur', except it can
mouse, so that highlighting disappears when you press a key. You can
also disable mouse highlighting.
+** You can now customize if selecting a region by dragging the mouse
+shall not copy the selected text to the kill-ring by setting the new
+variable mouse-drag-copy-region to nil.
+
+++
** font-lock: in modes like C and Lisp where the fontification assumes that
an open-paren in column 0 is always outside of any string or comment,
Minor Improvements
+*** The STARTTLS elisp wrapper (starttls.el) can now use GNUTLS
+instead of the OpenSSL based "starttls" tool. For backwards
+compatibility, it will prefer "starttls", but you can toggle
+`starttls-use-gnutls' to switch to GNUTLS (or simply remove the
+"starttls" tool).
+
*** Do not allow debugger output history variable to grow without bounds.
+++
`appt-display-format' controls how reminders are displayed, replacing
appt-issue-message, appt-visible, and appt-msg-window.
+** The new functions `diary-from-outlook', `diary-from-outlook-gnus',
+and `diary-from-outlook-rmail' can be used to import diary entries
+from Outlook-format appointments in mail messages. The variable
+`diary-outlook-formats' can be customized to recognize additional
+formats.
+
+
** VC Changes
*** The key C-x C-q no longer checks files in or out, it only changes
** F90 mode has new navigation commands `f90-end-of-block',
`f90-beginning-of-block', `f90-next-block', `f90-previous-block'.
+** F90 mode now has support for hs-minor-mode (hideshow).
+It cannot deal with every code format, but ought to handle a sizeable
+majority.
+
---
** Prolog mode has a new variable `prolog-font-lock-keywords'
to support use of font-lock.
to the text before point. If there is text in the buffer after point,
it remains unchanged.
-** Visual feedback of *Completions* buffer is enhanced.
-Faces are put on the common prefix substrings and the first uncommon
-charachters of each completion candidate in the *Completions* buffer.
-`completion-de-emphasis' is put on the common prefix substrings as the
-face; and `completion-emphasis' is put on the first uncommon
-charachters. By default `completion-de-emphasis' is inherited from
-`default' face. `completion-emphasis' is inherited from `bold' face.
+** Enhanced visual feedback in *Completions* buffer.
+
+Completions lists use faces to highlight what all completions
+have in common and where they begin to differ.
+
+The common prefix shared by all possible completions uses the face
+`completions-common-part', while the first character that isn't the
+same uses the face `completions-first-difference'. By default,
+`completions-common-part' inherits from `default', and
+`completions-first-difference' inherits from `bold'. The idea of
+`completions-common-part' is that you can use it to make the common
+parts less visible than normal, so that the rest of the differing
+parts is, by contrast, slightly highlighted.
+++
** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'.
to Windows, and can be found in both source and binary form at
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. Note that libpng also depends on
zlib, and tiff depends on the version of jpeg that it was compiled
-against.
+against. For additional information, see nt/INSTALL.
---
** Sound is now supported on MS Windows.
D: shows the diff of the revision at line with its previous revision
L: shows the log of the revision at line
W: annotates the workfile (most up to date) version
+
++++
+** In pcl-cvs mode, there is a new `d y' command to view the diffs
+between the local version of the file and yesterday's head revision
+in the repository.
+
\f
* New modes and packages in Emacs 21.4
+** The new package flymake.el does on-the-fly syntax checking of program
+source files. See the Flymake's Info manual for more details.
+
+** The library tree-widget.el provides a new widget to display a set
+of hierarchical data as an outline. For example, the tree-widget is
+well suited to display a hierarchy of directories and files.
+
+** The wdired.el package allows you to use normal editing commands on dired
+buffers to change filenames, permissions, etc...
+
** The new python.el package is used to edit Python and Jython programs.
** The URL package (which had been part of W3) is now part of Emacs.
are left unspecified and can be bound individually through the global
or local keymaps.
++++
** The new kmacro package provides a simpler user interface to
emacs' keyboard macro facilities.
\f
* Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.4
+** If a command sets transient-mark-mode to `only', that
+enables Transient Mark mode for the following command, only.
+
++++
+** Cleaner way to enter key sequences.
+
+You can enter a constant key sequence in a more natural format, the
+same one used for saving keyboard macros, using the macro `kbd'. For
+example,
+
+(kbd "C-x C-f") => "\^x\^f"
+
+** The sentinel is now called when a network process is deleted with
+delete-process. The status message passed to the sentinel for a
+deleted network process is "deleted". The message passed to the
+sentinel when the connection is closed by the remote peer has been
+changed to "connection broken by remote peer".
+
+** If the buffer's undo list for the current command gets longer than
+undo-outer-limit, garbage collection empties it. This is to prevent
+it from using up the available memory and choking Emacs.
+
+---
+** New function quail-find-key returns a list of keys to type in the
+current input method to input a character.
+
++++
+** New functions posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y return
+click-event-style position information for a given visible buffer
+position or for a given window pixel coordinate.
+
+** skip-chars-forward and skip-chars-backward now handle
+character classes such as [:alpha:], along with individual characters
+and ranges.
+
+** Function pos-visible-in-window-p now returns the pixel coordinates
+and partial visiblity state of the corresponding row, if the PARTIALLY
+arg is non-nil.
+
+** The function `eql' is now available without requiring the CL package.
+
++++
+** The new primitive `set-file-times' sets a file's access and
+modification times. Magic file name handlers can handle this
+operation.
+
** The display space :width and :align-to text properties are now
supported on text terminals.
+** Support for displaying image slices
+
+*** New display property (slice X Y WIDTH HEIGHT) may be used with
+an image property to display only a specific slice of the image.
+
+*** Function insert-image has new optional fourth arg to
+specify image slice (X Y WIDTH HEIGHT).
+
+*** New function insert-sliced-image inserts a given image as a
+specified number of evenly sized slices (rows x columns).
+
+** New line-height and line-spacing properties for newline characters
+
+A newline may now have line-height and line-spacing text or overlay
+properties that control the height of the corresponding display row.
+
+If the line-height property value is 0, the newline does not
+contribute to the height of the display row; instead the height of the
+newline glyph is reduced. Also, a line-spacing property on this
+newline is ignored. This can be used to tile small images or image
+slices without adding blank areas between the images.
+
+If the line-height property value is a positive integer, the value
+specifies the minimum line height in pixels. If necessary, the line
+height it increased by increasing the line's ascent.
+
+If the line-height property value is a float, the minimum line height
+is calculated by multiplying the default frame line height by the
+given value.
+
+If the line-height property value is a cons (RATIO . FACE), the
+minimum line height is calculated as RATIO * height of named FACE.
+RATIO is int or float. If FACE is t, it specifies the current face.
+
+If the line-spacing property value is an positive integer, the value
+is used as additional pixels to insert after the display line; this
+overrides the default frame line-spacing and any buffer local value of
+the line-spacing variable.
+
+If the line-spacing property may be a float or cons, the line spacing
+is calculated as specified above for the line-height property.
+
+If the line-spacing value is a cons (total . SPACING) where SPACING is
+any of the forms described above, the value of SPACING is used as the
+total height of the line, i.e. a varying number of pixels are inserted
+after each line to make each line exactly that many pixels high.
+
+
+** The buffer local line-spacing variable may now have a float value,
+which is used as a height relative to the default frame line height.
+
** Enhancements to stretch display properties
The display property stretch specification form `(space PROPS)', where
variable `sentence-end-without-space' which contains such characters
that end a sentence without following spaces.
+** The function `sentence-end' should be used to obtain the value of
+the variable `sentence-end'. If the variable `sentence-end' is nil,
+then this function returns the regexp constructed from the variables
+`sentence-end-without-period', `sentence-end-double-space' and
+`sentence-end-without-space'.
+
+++
** The flags, width, and precision options for %-specifications in function
`format' are now documented. Some flags that were accepted but not
specification language, which can be used to do this test for faces
defined with defface.
+** The function face-differs-from-default-p now truly checks whether the
+given face displays differently from the default face or not (previously
+it did only a very cursory check).
+
+++
** face-attribute, face-foreground, face-background, and face-stipple now
accept a new optional argument, INHERIT, which controls how face
** New functions face-attribute-relative-p and merge-face-attribute
help with handling relative face attributes.
+** The priority of faces in an :inherit attribute face-list is reversed.
+If a face contains an :inherit attribute with a list of faces, earlier
+faces in the list override later faces in the list; in previous releases
+of Emacs, the order was the opposite. This change was made so that
+:inherit face-lists operate identically to face-lists in text `face'
+properties.
+
+++
** Enhancements to process support
** New function x-send-client-message sends a client message when
running under X.
+** Arguments for remove-overlays are now optional, so that you can remove
+all overlays in the buffer by just calling (remove-overlay).
+
** New packages:
*** The new package gdb-ui.el provides an enhanced graphical interface to
with Custom.
** UTF-16 coding systems are available, encoding the same characters
-as mule-utf-8. Coding system `utf-16-le-dos' is useful as the value
-of `selection-coding-system' in MS Windows, allowing you to paste
-multilingual text from the clipboard. Set it interactively with
-C-x RET x or in .emacs with `(set-selection-coding-system 'utf-16-le-dos)'.
+as mule-utf-8.
** There is a new language environment for UTF-8 (set up automatically
in UTF-8 locales).
HCoop / bpt / emacs.git / blobdiff