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1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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3See the end for copying conditions.
4
5Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8\f
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9* Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
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11** There are two new resources for colormap handling under X.
12
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13*** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
14whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
15is useful for debugging X problems.
16
17Example:
18
19 emacs.synchronous: true
20
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21*** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
22visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
23the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
24and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
25visual class names are
26
27 TrueColor
28 PseudoColor
29 DirectColor
30 StaticColor
31 GrayScale
32 StaticGray
33
34Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
35`pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
36meaning.
37
38The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
39supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
40`visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
41visual.
42
43Example:
44
45 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
46
47*** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
48specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
49default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
50resource values are `true' or `on'.
51
52Example:
53
54 emacs.privateColormap: true
55
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56** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
57the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
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58
59** There are new configure options associated with the support for
60images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option to list them.
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62* Changes in Emacs 21.1
63
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64** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
65more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
66now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
67
42088c12 68** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
c60ea02e 69display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
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70shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
71be customized.
c60ea02e 72
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73** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
74
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75** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
76all frames except the selected one.
77
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78** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
79to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
80
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81** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
82the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X either in the echo
83area or with tooltips.
84
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85** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
86read mail from the menu etc.
87
88** Changes in Outline mode.
89
90There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
91`outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
92the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
93
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94** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
95groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
96
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97** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
98or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
99several other special buffers.
100
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101** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
102under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
103.emacs file.
104
105The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
106determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
107
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108** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
109abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
110`directory-abbrev-alist'.
111
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112** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
113is running in batch mode. For example,
114
115 (message "%s" (read t))
116
117will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
118to standard output.
119
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120** Faces and frame parameters.
121
122There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
123Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
124`scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
125`scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
126sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
127for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
128parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
129
130Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
131`default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
79214ddf 132`foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
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133`default' face and vice versa.
134
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135** New face `menu'.
136
137The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
138Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
139attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
140
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141** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
142
143The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
144colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
145correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
146the screen gamma of a frame's display.
147
148PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
149in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
150color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
151
152The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
153`ScreenGamma'.
154
155** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
156
157The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
158Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
159oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
160of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
161the text.
162
163** Emacs has a new face implementation.
164
165The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
166font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
167height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
168These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
169specify a font.
170
171Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
172These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
173under Lisp changes, below.
174
175** New default font is Courier 12pt.
176
177** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
178its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
179it is hollow.
180
181** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
182truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
183foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
184customizing face `fringe'.
185
186** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
187can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
188
189** LessTif support.
190
191Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
192need a version 0.88.1 or later.
193
194** Toolkit scroll bars.
195
196Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
197LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
198configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
199bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
200bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
201Emacs.
202
203When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
204Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
205Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
206Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
207define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
208`s/freebsd.h' as an example.
209
210Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
211a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
212directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
213different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
214system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
215add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
216
217The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
218`float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
219This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
220image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
221Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
222
223** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
224
225When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
226widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
227Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
228
229** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
230
231When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
232whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
233defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
234highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
235displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
236whitespace.
237
238** Busy-cursor.
239
240Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
241display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
242
243** Blinking cursor
244
245M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
246terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
247and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
248the group `cursor'.
249
250** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
251
252This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
253generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
254See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
255details.
256
257Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
258have to do anything to activate it.
259
260** Tabs and variable-width text.
261
262Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
263defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
264independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
265Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
266
267** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
268
269*** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
270
271 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
272
273The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
274one.
275
276*** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
277Motif.
278
279** Hscrolling in C code.
280
281Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
282
283** Tool bar support.
284
285Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
286how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
287
288** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
289
290Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
291mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
292line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
293about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
294in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
295
296Currently, the following actions have been defined:
297
298- Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
299buffers.
300
301- Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
302M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
303
304- Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
305
559cee90 306- Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
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307toggles the read-only status.
308
309- Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
310
311** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
312
313When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
e33b0397 314from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
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315non-nil.
316
317** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
318
319Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
320Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
321the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
322italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
323Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
324attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
325
326** Sound support
327
328Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
329(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
330Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
331(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
332to enable sound support.
333
334** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
335the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
336forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
337value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
338users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
339even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
340
341The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
342
343** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
344
345As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
346drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
347`x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
348
349** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
350bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
351
352This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
353`indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
354variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
355
356** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
357
358When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
359value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
360number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
361fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
362
363When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
364value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
365number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
366fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
367
368** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
369notably at the end of lines.
370
371All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
372spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
373
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374There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
375
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376** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
377query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
378after each match to get the replacement text.
379
380** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
381
382If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
383longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
384on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
385by setting the following variable:
386
387- User option: max-mini-window-height
388
389Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
390fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
391specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
392
393Default is 0.25.
394
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395** Changes to hideshow.el
396
397Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
398selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
399
400*** Generalized block selection and traversal
401
402A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
403(both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
404which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
405`forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
406point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
407(which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
408
409If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
410i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
411backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
412the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
413
414*** Isearch support for updating mode line
415
416During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
417blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
418line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
419portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
420is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
421
422To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
423something like this in your .emacs.
424
425 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
426 (lambda ()
427 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
428
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429** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
430
431If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
432entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
433log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
434
435New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
436buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
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437
438Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
439if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
440
441The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
442expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
443cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
444a file.
445
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446** Changes in Font Lock
447
448*** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
449font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
450mode.
451
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452** Comint (subshell) changes
453
454Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
455and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
456
457The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
458buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
459buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
460
461The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
462M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
463the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
464
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465** Changes to Rmail mode
466
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467*** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
468like `j'.
469
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470*** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
471specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
2d5e9b54 472digest message.
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474** Changes to TeX mode
475
476The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
477`latex-mode'.
478
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479** Changes to RefTeX mode
480
481*** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
482 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
483 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
484 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
485 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
486 can be edited from that buffer.
487
488*** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
489 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
490 `A' to use all marked entries).
491
492*** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
493 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
494
495*** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
496 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
497 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
498 been cited.
499
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500** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
501The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
502semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
503in column 1 are always made leaves.
504
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505** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
506has the following new features:
507
508*** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
509may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
510to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
511time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
512
513*** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
514feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
515file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
516compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
517pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
518defaults to 1.
519
520** Tooltips.
521
522Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
523mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
524can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
525
526Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
527variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
528the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
529tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
530
531** Customize changes
532
533*** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
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534`State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
535cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
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536
537*** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
538Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
539default).
540
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541*** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
542between custom options. Example:
543
544 (defcustom default-input-method nil
545 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
546 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
547 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
548 :group 'mule
549 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
550 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
551
552This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
553current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
554first in a custom-set-variables statement.
555
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556** New features in evaluation commands
557
558The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
559modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
560print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
561customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
562eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
563
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564** Dired changes
565
566*** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
567command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
568is, delete only empty directories.
569
570*** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
571command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
572copy directories recursively.
573
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574*** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
575in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
576the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
577
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578** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
579use the -f option when sending mail.
580
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581** CC mode changes.
582
583Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
584current user setups (although it's believed that these
585incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
586However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
587back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
588compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
589release.
590
591*** New initialization procedure for the style system.
592When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
593variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
594take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
595is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
596settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
597possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
598Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
599
600By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
601special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
602the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
603of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
604above.
605
606Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
607when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
608function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
609call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
610then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
611values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
612only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
613function documentation for more info.
614
615The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
616especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
617with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
618intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
619such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
620is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
621configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
622global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
623
624(Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
625
626**** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
627This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
628
629This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
630variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
631completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
632the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
633empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
634style system.
635
636**** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
637In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
638c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
639as far as possible.
640
641*** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
642CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
643surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
644chapter about this in the manual.
645
646**** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
647The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
648recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
649primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
650adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
651
652**** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
653This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
654c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
655
656**** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
657This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
658
659It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
660Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
661A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
662inside CC Mode.
663
664Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
665causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
666the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
667available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
668cc-mode/).
669
670**** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
671The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
672specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
673literals.
674
675**** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
676It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
677prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
678you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
679this function.
680
681*** Fixes to IDL mode.
682It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
683to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
684struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
685Thanks to Eric Eide.
686
687*** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
688It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
689opening braces hangs and when they don't.
690
691**** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
692
693*** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
694See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
695better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
696and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
697
698*** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
699previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
700the column specified by comment-column.
701
702*** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
703In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
704is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
705prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
706contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
707don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
708
709*** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
710instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
711arguments.
712
713*** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
714
715*** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
716c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
717c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
718variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
719Provan).
720
721*** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
722
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723** Isearch changes
724
725*** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
a933dad1
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726selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
727
87be76f6
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728*** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
729
d35fce81 730Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
87be76f6
GM
731`isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
732search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
733before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
734highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
735`secondary-selection'.
736
737The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
738will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
739Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
740using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
741usual snappy response.
742
743If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
744matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
745set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
746isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
747
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GM
748** Changes in sort.el
749
750The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
12c25bdc 751as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
35384f06
GM
752new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
753numeric base.
87be76f6 754
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DL
755** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
756names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
757sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
758
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759** Shell script mode changes.
760
761Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
762derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
763sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
764
79214ddf
FP
765** Etags changes.
766
767*** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
768
aca0be23 769*** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
8dc78b52
FP
770possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
771{lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
772This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
773a regular expression. The manual contains details.
aca0be23 774
79214ddf
FP
775*** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
776declarations when given the --declarations option.
777
778*** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
aca0be23 779"operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
79214ddf
FP
780
781*** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
782types.
783
784*** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
785
786*** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
787
788*** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
789are now tagged.
790
791*** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
792variables are tagged.
793
794*** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
795
8dc78b52
FP
796*** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
797for PSWrap.
79214ddf 798
f6737cde
GM
799** Changes in etags.el
800
801*** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
802the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
803
804If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
805FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
806TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
807obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
808
809TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
810
811FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
812List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
813
814A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
815
816 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
817 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
818 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
819
820*** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
821of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
822
823*** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
824names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
825
fbc164de
PE
826** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
827and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
828LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
829
59c1bf85
DL
830** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
831These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
832(Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
833currently no specific input method support for them.
834
e33b0397
DL
835** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sqeuence-nos' to
836remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
837appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
838
839** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
840
6f8ea2ae
DL
841** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
842
a933dad1
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843** New modes and packages
844
5e5dff44
GM
845*** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
846authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
847
848The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
849the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
850the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
851Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
852even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
853single step.
854
855On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
856matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
857probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
858contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
859
f7136ee8
GM
860*** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
861unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
862actually modifying content of a buffer.
863
bbd9b566
GM
864*** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
865PostScript.
866
867Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
868
869The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
870
871 ; comment (until end of line)
872 A non-terminal
873 "C" terminal
874 ?C? special
875 $A default non-terminal
876 $"C" default terminal
877 $?C? default special
878 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
879 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
880 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
881 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
882 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
883 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
884 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
885 C+ one or more occurrences of C
886 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
887 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
888 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
889 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
890 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
891 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
892 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
893
894Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
895
99453a38
GM
896*** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
897align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
898determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
899example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
900equal signs of assignments.
901
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DL
902*** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
903paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
904
6448a6b3
GM
905*** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
906list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
907buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
908customize the package.
909
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GM
910*** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
911replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
912is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
913and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
914not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
915which answers different needs.
916
3476b54a
GM
917*** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
918suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
919expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
920course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
921reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
922to be enabled.
923
8964fec7
SM
924*** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
925containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
926
a933dad1
DL
927*** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
928
929*** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
930
931*** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
932
933*** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
934Pascal) language.
935
936*** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
937the text at point.
938
939*** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
940
8d54eb69
DL
941*** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
942
a933dad1
DL
943*** whitespace.el ???
944
ebcfda83
GM
945*** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
946files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
947(very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
948interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
949often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
950uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
951codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
952
953*** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
954
955Here is an example of columns:
956
957horse apple bus
958dog pineapple car EXTRA
959porcupine strawberry airplane
960
961Doing the following settings:
962
963 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
964 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
965 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
966 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
967
968
969Selecting the lines above and typing:
970
971 M-x delimit-columns-region
972
973It results:
974
975[ horse , apple , bus , ]
976[ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
977[ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
978
979delim-col has the following options:
980
981 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
982 before all columns.
983
984 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
985 between each column.
986
987 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
988 after all columns.
989
990 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
991 each column.
992
993delim-col has the following commands:
994
995 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
996 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
997
f507826c
GM
998*** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
999were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
1000is displayed in the "Files" menu.
1001
1002The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
1003
1004To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
1005
1006To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
1007M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
1008
1009To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
1010M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
1011
8062f458
DL
1012*** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1013text.
1014
36e24b82 1015*** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
91735437
DL
1016of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1017specific to Message mode.
1018
36e24b82
DL
1019*** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1020viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1021with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1022
aaa659ef
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1023*** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1024interface to access directory servers using different directory
1025protocols. It has a separate manual.
1026
eee54b0e
DL
1027*** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1028for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1029
aaa659ef
DL
1030*** glasses.el
1031
1032*** windmove.el
1033
a933dad1
DL
1034** Withdrawn packages
1035
1036*** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1037functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
25a81338 1038
3261c1d8
DL
1039*** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1040
1041*** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
a933dad1
DL
1042\f
1043* Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1044
1045Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1046--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1047When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1048so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1049
e9b4e5ff
GM
1050** The function documentation-property now evaluates the value of
1051the given property to obtain a a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1052and isn't a string.
1053
16ce590d
DL
1054+++
1055** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1056
1057** The new function `replace-regexps-in-string' replaces all matches
1058for a regexp in a string.
1059
1060** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1061`mouse-position-function'.
1062
723e779c
GM
1063** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1064that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1065
d1e103b2
GM
1066** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1067Keywords are now always considered constants.
1068
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DL
1069+++
1070** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1071returns it.
1072
7a85e4df
GM
1073** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1074returned by function `recent-keys'.
1075
02b14400
RS
1076+++
1077** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1078can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1079Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1080etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1081mode.
404fa7d6 1082
02b14400 1083+++
8964fec7
SM
1084** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1085and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1086
02b14400
RS
1087+++
1088** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1089has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1090function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1091returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1092been performed."
1093
1094When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1095and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1096hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1097then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
ef961722 1098
02b14400 1099+++
81da8b32
GM
1100** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1101In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1102and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1103
02b14400 1104+++
9e207b90
GM
1105** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1106with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1107specified table.
1108
1109 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1110
1111Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
03d9c64c
GM
1112TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1113saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1114what BODY returns.
9e207b90 1115
02b14400 1116+++
d7f89643 1117** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
95cd4c40 1118Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
8964fec7 1119
02b14400 1120+++
dde9e75a
GM
1121** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1122removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1123
02b14400 1124+++
9da30515
GM
1125** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1126instead of being optional.
1127
02b14400 1128+++
d20679eb
GM
1129** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1130modify read-only text.
1131
02b14400 1132+++
fbc164de
PE
1133** New functions and variables for locales.
1134
1135The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1136decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
b718982a
PE
1137time functions like strftime. The new variables
1138`system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1139locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
fbc164de
PE
1140
1141The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1142environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1143the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
b718982a
PE
1144environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1145not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1146`locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1147`locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
fbc164de 1148
02b14400 1149+++
863476d1
SM
1150** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1151To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1152modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1153start sequences.
1154
02b14400 1155+++
ef6d912c
GM
1156** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1157because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1158
02b14400 1159+++
a933dad1
DL
1160** New function `propertize'
1161
1162The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1163strings with text properties.
1164
1165- Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1166
1167Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1168by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1169PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1170specified value of that property. Example:
1171
1172 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1173
1174+++
1175** push and pop macros.
1176
02b14400
RS
1177Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1178are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
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DL
1179as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1180
1181(push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1182(pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1183 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1184
02b14400
RS
1185** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1186
6c7fd5aa
RS
1187Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1188are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
02b14400
RS
1189
1190(dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1191 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1192 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1193 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1194
1195(dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1196 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1197 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1198 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1199
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1200+++
1201** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1202as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1203
1204[:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1205[:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1206[:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1207[:blank:] matches space and tab only
1208[:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1209 space, and DEL.
1210[:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1211 and DEL.
1212[:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1213 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1214 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1215[:alpha:] matches letters.
1216 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1217 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1218[:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1219[:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1220[:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1221[:punct:] matches punctuation.
1222 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1223 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1224[:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1225[:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1226[:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1227
1228+++
1229** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1230
1231The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1232
1233- Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1234
1235The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1236are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1237
1238:test TEST
1239
1240TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1241Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1242it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1243
1244:size SIZE
1245
1246SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1247many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1248
1249:rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1250
1251REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1252full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1253size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
12541.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1255old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1256
1257:rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1258
1259THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1260hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1261(size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1262
1263:weakness WEAK
1264
1265WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
1266Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
1267their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
1268hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1269
1270- Function: makehash &optional TEST
1271
1272Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1273
1274- Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1275
1276Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1277
1278- Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1279
1280Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1281values are shared.
1282
1283- Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1284
1285Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1286
1287- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1288
1289Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1290
1291- Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1292
1293Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1294
1295- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1296
1297Returns the size of TABLE.
1298
1299- Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1300
1301Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1302
1303- Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1304
1305Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1306
1307- Function: clrhash TABLE
1308
1309Clear TABLE.
1310
1311- Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1312
1313Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1314not found.
1315
79214ddf 1316- Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
a933dad1
DL
1317
1318Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1319another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1320
1321- Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1322
1323Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1324
1325- Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1326
1327Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1328arguments KEY and VALUE.
1329
1330- Function: sxhash OBJ
1331
1332Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1333
1334- Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1335
1336Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1337a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
79214ddf 1338comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
a933dad1
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1339and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1340of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1341
1342TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1343
1344HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1345code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1346integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1347
1348Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1349be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1350
1351 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1352 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1353
1354 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1355 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1356
79214ddf 1357 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
a933dad1
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1358 'case-fold-string-hash))
1359
1360 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1361
1362+++
1363** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1364
1365It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1366circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1367a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1368
1369+++
1370** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1371
1372If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1373#N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1374
a933dad1
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1375+++
1376** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
1377t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
1378specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
1379is too short to reach that column.
1380
1381+++
1382** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
1383now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
1384after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
1385two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
1386
1387If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
1388perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
1389and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
1390
1391+++
1392** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
1393to specify which buffer to return the size of.
1394
1395+++
1396** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
1397calendar-move-hook after moving point.
1398
1399+++
1400** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
1401directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
1402small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
1403small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
1404temporary-file-directory instead.
1405
1406+++
1407** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
1408the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
1409`before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
1410hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
1411
1412+++
1413** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
1414elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
1415
1416+++
1417** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
1418
1419make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
1420creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
1421ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
1422
1423+++
1424** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
1425
1426The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
1427on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
1428is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
1429never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
1430ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
1431overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
1432
1433If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
1434that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
1435to get an error if the file exists at that time.
1436The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
1437
1438+++
1439** Function `format' now handles text properties.
1440
1441Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
1442If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
1443ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
1444result string.
1445
1446Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
1447string where arguments appear in the result string.
1448
1449Example:
1450
1451 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
1452 (s2 "world"))
1453 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
1454 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
b246b1f6 1455 (format s1 s2))
a933dad1
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1456
1457results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
1458
1459+++
1460** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
1461
1462Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
1463The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
1464argument in it.
1465
1466 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
1467 (arg "world"))
1468 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
1469 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
1470 (message msg arg))
1471
1472+++
1473** Sound support
1474
1475Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
1476(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
1477
1478Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
1479(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
1480to enable sound support.
1481
1482Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
1483list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
1484when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
1485functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
1486sound to play, before playing the sound.
1487
1488The following sound properties are supported:
1489
1490- `:file FILE'
1491
1492FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
1493searched relative to `data-directory'.
1494
6fb40beb
GM
1495- `:data DATA'
1496
1497DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
1498may be present, but not both.
1499
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1500- `:volume VOLUME'
1501
1502VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
15030..1. This property is optional.
1504
1505Other properties are ignored.
1506
1507** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
356673d4
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1508
1509** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
1510a keyword symbol.
fc91dc2d
GM
1511
1512** Changes to garbage collection
1513
1514*** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
1515of live and free strings.
1516
1517*** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
1518strings that have been consed so far.
1519
a933dad1
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1520\f
1521* New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
1522
1523Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1524--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1525When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1526so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1527
1528** New face implementation.
1529
1530Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
1531font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
1532
1533+++
1534*** New faces.
1535
1536Each face can specify the following display attributes:
1537
1538 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
79214ddf 1539
a933dad1
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1540 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
1541 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
79214ddf 1542
a933dad1 1543 3. Font height in 1/10pt
79214ddf 1544
a933dad1 1545 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
79214ddf 1546
a933dad1 1547 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
79214ddf 1548
a933dad1 1549 6. Foreground color.
79214ddf 1550
a933dad1
DL
1551 7. Background color.
1552
1553 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
1554
1555 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
1556
1557 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
1558
1559 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
1560
1561 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
1562 color.
1563
1564 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
1565 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
1566
1567Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
1568same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
1569frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
1570faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
1571with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
1572attributes mentioned above.
1573
1574There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
1575definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
1576created frames.
79214ddf 1577
a933dad1
DL
1578A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
1579have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
1580`fully-specified'.
1581
1582+++
1583*** Face merging.
1584
1585The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
1586combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
1587aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
1588properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
1589that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
1590results in a fully-specified face.
1591
1592+++
1593*** Face realization.
1594
1595After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
1596merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
1597realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
1598available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
1599face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
1600cache of the frame on which it was realized.
1601
1602Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
1603character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
1604for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
1605charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
1606
1607Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
1608specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
1609being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
1610the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
1611statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
1612
1613In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
1614`char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
16150x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
1616the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
1617initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
1618Emacs.
1619
1620Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
1621`enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
1622registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
1623with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
1624
1625++++
1626**** Clearing face caches.
1627
1628The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
1629on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
1630unused fonts.
1631
1632+++
1633*** Font selection.
79214ddf 1634
a933dad1
DL
1635Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
1636given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
1637for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
1638
1639If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1640pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1641family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1642property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1643an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1644
1645Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1646against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1647match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1648
1649Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1650
1651The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1652attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1653face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1654names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1655that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1656width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1657to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1658
1659Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1660specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1661face doesn't exist.
1662
1663+++
1664**** Scalable fonts
1665
1666Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1667since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1668servers.
1669
1670To enable scalable font use, set the variable
b246b1f6 1671`scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
a933dad1
DL
1672scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1673Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1674scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1675that list. Example:
1676
1677 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1678
1679allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1680
1681+++
1682*** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1683
1684- Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1685
1686Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1687is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1688string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1689
1690If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1691the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1692FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1693POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1694SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1695These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1696if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1697REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1698the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1699of the face font sort order.
1700
79214ddf 1701- Function: x-font-family-list
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DL
1702
1703Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1704omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1705(FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1706non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1707
1708- Variable: font-list-limit
1709
1710Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1711won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1712matching font. The default is currently 100.
1713
1714+++
1715*** Setting face attributes.
1716
1717For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1718with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1719implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1720`face-attribute'.
1721
1722Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1723symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1724
1725The following attributes are recognized:
1726
1727`:family'
1728
1729VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1730or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1731and `?' are allowed.
1732
1733`:width'
1734
1735VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1736It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1737`condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1738`extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1739
1740`:height'
1741
1742VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
17431/10 pt.
1744
1745`:weight'
1746
1747VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1748symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1749`semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1750
1751`:slant'
1752
1753VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1754symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1755`reverse-oblique'.
1756
1757`:foreground', `:background'
1758
1759VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1760
1761`:underline'
1762
1763VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1764VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1765a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1766don't underline.
1767
1768`:overline'
1769
1770VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1771VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1772string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1773overline.
1774
1775`:strike-through'
1776
1777VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1778striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1779face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1780is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1781
1782`:box'
1783
1784VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1785around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1786VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1787of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1788and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1789VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1790:color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1791the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1792specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1793defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1794the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1795color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1796should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1797like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1798that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1799the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1800box.
1801
1802`:inverse-video'
1803
1804VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1805inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1806
1807`:stipple'
1808
1809If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1810The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1811searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1812HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1813is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1814explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1815
1816For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1817and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1818
1819`:font'
1820
1821Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1822XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1823is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1824versions of Emacs.
1825
1826For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1827be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1828must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1829
1830Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1831`defface'.
1832
1833*** Face attributes and X resources
1834
1835The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1836from X resources:
1837
1838 Face attribute X resource class
1839-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1840 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1841 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1842 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1843 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1844 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1845 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1846 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1847 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1848 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1849 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1850 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1851 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1852 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
79214ddf 1853 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
a933dad1
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1854 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1855 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1856 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1857 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1858 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1859
1860+++
1861*** Text property `face'.
1862
1863The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1864specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1865specification can be
1866
18671. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1868
18692. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1870 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1871 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1872 for face attribute names.
1873
18743. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1875 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1876 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1877
1878+++
1879** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1880
acf3ecb7
EZ
1881The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
1882on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
1883the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
a933dad1 1884default. You can get defined colors with a call to
acf3ecb7 1885`defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
a933dad1
DL
1886used to clear the mapping table.
1887
acf3ecb7
EZ
1888** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
1889
1890The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
1891and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
1892type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
1893color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
1894display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
1895old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
1896`x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
1897compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
1898should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
1899modify their color-related behavior.
1900
1901The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
1902any frame type.
1903
8a5719f0
EZ
1904** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
1905
1906The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
1907`display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
1908`display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
1909`display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
1910`display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
1911`display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
1912display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
1913the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
1914platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
1915
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1916+++
1917** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
a933dad1 1918
463cac2d 1919This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
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DL
1920
1921The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1922end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1923Otherwise, it returns zero.
1924
463cac2d
GM
1925** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
1926
1927There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
1928buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
1929text-property.
1930
9a9dfda8 1931Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
463cac2d 1932forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
9a9dfda8 1933to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
463cac2d 1934not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
fc7ac24f
GM
1935commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
1936boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
1937`inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
1938functions.
463cac2d
GM
1939
1940Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
9a9dfda8 1941a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
463cac2d 1942editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
a933dad1 1943
9a9dfda8
GM
1944The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
1945
1946- Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
1947
1948Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
1949A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1950If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
1951constrained position if that is is different.
1952
1953If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
1954positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
1955ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
1956constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
1957as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1958is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
1959fields.
1960
1961If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
1962NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
1963unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
1964C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
1965only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
1966
1967- Function: erase-field &optional POS
1968
1969Erases the field surrounding POS.
1970A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1971If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1972
1973- Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1974
1975Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
1976A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1977If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1978If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
1979field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
1980
1981- Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1982
1983Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
1984A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1985If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1986If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
1987then the end of the *following* field is returned.
1988
1989- Function: field-string &optional POS
1990
1991Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
1992A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1993If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1994
1995- Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
1996
1997Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
1998A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1999If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2000
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DL
2001+++
2002** Image support.
2003
2004Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2005strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2006(AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2007replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2008
2009If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2010`(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2011AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2012window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2013area.
2014
2015IMAGE is an image specification.
2016
2017*** Image specifications
2018
2019Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2020is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2021specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
35a5514b
GM
2022symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2023described below are ignored.
a933dad1
DL
2024
2025The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2026
2027`:ascent ASCENT'
2028
2029ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
2030of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
2031
2032`:margin MARGIN'
2033
79214ddf 2034MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
a933dad1
DL
2035margin around the image. Default is 0.
2036
2037`:relief RELIEF'
2038
2039RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2040around an image.
2041
2042`:algorithm ALGO'
2043
2044Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2045be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2046supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2047which is intended to display images "disabled."
2048
2049`:heuristic-mask BG'
2050
2051If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2052background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2053determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2054corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2055the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2056be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2057background of the image.
2058
2059`:file FILE'
2060
2061Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2062search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2063building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2064may be present in the image specification.
2065
518df5c4
GM
2066`:data DATA'
2067
2068Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2069supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2070present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2071support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2072
a933dad1
DL
2073*** Supported image types
2074
b246b1f6 2075**** XBM, image type `xbm'.
a933dad1
DL
2076
2077XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2078properties supported are
2079
2080`:foreground FG'
2081
2082FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2083is the frame's foreground.
2084
2085`:background FG'
2086
2087BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2088the frame's background color.
2089
2090XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2091case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2092instead of a `:file' property.
2093
2094`:width WIDTH'
2095
2096WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2097
2098`:height HEIGHT'
2099
2100HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2101
2102`:data DATA'
2103
2104DATA must be either
2105
2106 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2107 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2108
2109 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2110
2111 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2112 bitmap.
2113
2114**** XPM, image type `xpm'
2115
2116XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2117`xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2118found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2119`--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2120
2121Additional image properties supported are:
2122
2123`:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2124
2125SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2126name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2127name.
2128
2129XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2130add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2131
a933dad1
DL
2132The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2133to display compressed images.
2134
2135**** PBM, image type `pbm'
2136
2137PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2138mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2139defined.
2140
2141**** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2142
2143Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
3bd37feb
GM
2144package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2145are:
2146
a933dad1
DL
2147**** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2148
2149Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2150package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2151properties defined.
2152
2153**** GIF, image type `gif'
2154
2155Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2156`libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2157
2158Additional image properties supported are:
2159
2160`:index INDEX'
2161
2162INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2163multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2164
2165This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2166For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2167at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2168every 0.1 seconds.
2169
2170(defun show-anim (file max)
2171 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2172 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2173
2174(defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2175 (when (= idx max)
2176 (setq idx 0))
518df5c4 2177 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
a933dad1
DL
2178 (save-excursion
2179 (set-buffer buffer)
2180 (goto-char (point-min))
2181 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2182 (insert-image img "x"))
2183 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2184
2185**** PNG, image type `png'
2186
2187Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2188package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2189properties defined.
2190
2191**** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2192
2193Additional image properties supported are:
2194
2195`:pt-width WIDTH'
2196
2197WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
b246b1f6 2198integer. This is a required property.
a933dad1
DL
2199
2200`:pt-height HEIGHT'
2201
2202HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
b246b1f6 2203must be a integer. This is an required property.
a933dad1
DL
2204
2205`:bounding-box BOX'
2206
2207BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2208the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2209files. This is an required property.
2210
2211Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2212lisp/gs.el.
2213
2214*** Lisp interface.
2215
79214ddf
FP
2216The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2217which are supported in the current configuration.
a933dad1
DL
2218
2219Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2220they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2221The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2222manually.
2223
2224*** Simplified image API, image.el
2225
2226The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2227creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2228can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2229define an image based on available image types. The functions
2230`put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2231buffer.
2232
2233+++
2234** Display margins.
2235
2236Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2237and images.
2238
2239To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2240`left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2241`set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2242obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2243`right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2244the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2245of the display margins.
2246
2247You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2248containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2249one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2250string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2251in this file).
2252
2253+++
2254** Help display
2255
2256Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2257moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2258`help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2259that have a `help-echo' property.
2260
2261The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
2262items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
2263If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
2264evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
2265tool-bar item is used.
2266
2267The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
2268help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
2269help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
2270
2271+++
2272** Vertical fractional scrolling.
2273
2274The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
2275This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
2276
2277The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
2278scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
2279The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
2280scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
2281used.
2282
79214ddf
FP
2283 (global-set-key [A-down]
2284 #'(lambda ()
a933dad1 2285 (interactive)
79214ddf 2286 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1 2287 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
79214ddf 2288 (global-set-key [A-up]
a933dad1
DL
2289 #'(lambda ()
2290 (interactive)
79214ddf 2291 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1
DL
2292 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
2293
2294+++
2295** New hook `fontification-functions'.
2296
2297Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
2298when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
2299variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
2300is called with one argument, POS.
2301
2302At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
2303characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
2304as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
2305property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
2306`fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
2307
2308+++
2309** Tool bar support.
2310
2311Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
2312parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
2313controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
2314suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
2315`auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
2316automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
2317
2318*** Tool bar item definitions
2319
2320Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
2321`tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
2322where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
79214ddf 2323
a933dad1
DL
2324CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
2325evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
2326the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
2327property (see below).
79214ddf 2328
a933dad1
DL
2329BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
2330binding are currently ignored.
2331
2332The following properties are recognized:
2333
2334`:enable FORM'.
79214ddf 2335
a933dad1
DL
2336FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
2337or disabled.
79214ddf 2338
a933dad1 2339`:visible FORM'
79214ddf 2340
a933dad1 2341FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
79214ddf 2342
a933dad1
DL
2343`:filter FUNCTION'
2344
2345FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
2346FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
2347used instead of BINDING to display this item.
79214ddf 2348
a933dad1
DL
2349`:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
2350
2351TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
2352and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
79214ddf 2353
a933dad1
DL
2354`:image IMAGES'
2355
2356IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
2357image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
2358meaning of each of the four elements:
2359
2360 Index Use when item is
2361 ----------------------------------------
2362 0 enabled and selected
2363 1 enabled and deselected
2364 2 disabled and selected
2365 3 disabled and deselected
79214ddf 2366
a933dad1 2367`:help HELP-STRING'.
79214ddf 2368
a933dad1
DL
2369Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
2370is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
2371
2372*** Tool-bar-related variables.
2373
2374If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
2375resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
2376than 1/4 of the frame's size.
2377
79214ddf 2378If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
a933dad1
DL
2379raised when the mouse moves over them.
2380
2381You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
2382`tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
2383pixels. Default is 1.
2384
2385You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
2386`tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
2387
2388*** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
2389
2390You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
79214ddf 2391a tool bar item. If
a933dad1
DL
2392
2393 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
2394 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
2395 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
2396
2397is the original tool bar item definition, then
2398
2399 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
2400
2401makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
2402item.
2403
2404** Mode line changes.
2405
2406+++
2407*** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
2408
2409The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
2410that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
2411a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
2412
24131. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
2414a `local-map' text property.
2415
24162. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
2417that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
2418
24193. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
2420is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
2421`local-map' property.
2422
2423The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
2424properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
2425example.
2426
54522c9f
GM
2427*** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
2428evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
2429
a933dad1
DL
2430+++
2431*** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
2432variable mode-line-format to nil.
2433
2434+++
2435*** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
2436
2437This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
2438`header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
2439completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
2440`default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
2441line.
2442
2443The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
2444`header-line'.
2445
2446The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
2447position in the header-line.
2448
2449+++
2450** Text property `display'
2451
2452The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
2453also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
2454`display' property should be a display specification, as described
2455below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
2456
2457*** Variable width and height spaces
2458
2459To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
2460specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
2461`(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
2462area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
2463marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
2464displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
2465simpler form STRETCH as property value.
2466
2467The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
2468PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
2469properties described below.
2470
2471The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
2472characters having the `display' property.
2473
2474- :width WIDTH
2475
2476Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
2477character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
2478
2479- :relative-width FACTOR
2480
2481Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
2482first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
2483same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
2484width of that character by FACTOR.
2485
2486- :align-to HPOS
2487
2488Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
2489value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
2490
2491Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
2492
2493- :height HEIGHT
2494
2495Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
2496normal line height.
2497
2498- :relative-height FACTOR
2499
2500The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
2501of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
2502
2503- :ascent ASCENT
2504
2505Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
2506used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
2507baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
2508equal to 100.
2509
2510You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
2511
2512*** Images
2513
2514A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
2515. IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
2516in the display, the characters having this display specification in
2517their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
2518the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
2519`(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
2520area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
2521the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
2522as display specification.
2523
2524*** Other display properties
2525
2526- :space-width FACTOR
2527
2528Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
2529should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
2530integer or float.
2531
2532- :height HEIGHT
2533
2534Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
2535
2536If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
2537means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
2538the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
2539``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
2540a font is available counts as a step.
2541
2542If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
2543as tall as the frame's default font.
2544
2545If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
2546height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
2547
2548Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
2549`height' bound to the current specified font height.
2550
2551- :raise FACTOR
2552
2553FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
2554font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
2555raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
2556amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
2557`:height' subproperty.
2558
2559*** Conditional display properties
2560
2561All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
2562has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
2563applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
2564During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
2565the text having the `display' property.
2566
2567The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
2568`(:when t SPEC)'.
2569
2570+++
2571** New menu separator types.
2572
2573Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
2574item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
2575treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
2576to specify other menu separator types.
2577
2578- `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
2579
2580No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
2581separator occurs.
2582
2583- `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
2584
2585A single line in the menu's foreground color.
2586
2587- `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
2588
2589A double line in the menu's foreground color.
2590
2591- `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
2592
2593A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2594
2595- `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
2596
2597A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2598
2599- `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
2600
2601A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
2602displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
2603
2604- `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
2605
2606A single line with 3D raised appearance.
2607
2608- `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
2609
2610A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
2611
2612- `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
2613
2614A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
2615
2616- `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
2617
2618Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2619
2620- `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
2621
2622Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
2623
2624- `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
2625
2626Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2627
2628- `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
2629
2630Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
2631
2632Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
2633the corresponding single-line separators.
2634
2635+++
2636** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
2637
2638The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
2639`scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
2640Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
2641that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
2642default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
2643default background is the background color of the frame, and the
2644default foreground is black.
2645
2646The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
2647(class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
2648`ScrollBarBackground').
2649
2650Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
2651settings for scroll bar colors.
2652
2653+++
2654** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
2655display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
2656
2657---
2658** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
2659starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
2660on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
2661line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
2662the original window start.
2663
2664---
2665** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
2666`hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
2667now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
2668
2669+++
2670** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
2671
2672A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
2673`window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
2674windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
2675other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
2676
2677The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
2678fixed-width and fixed-height.
2679
2680 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
2681
2682A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
2683fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
2684window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
2685change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
2686temporarily to nil, for example
2687
2688 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
2689 (enlarge-window 10))
2690
79214ddf 2691Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
a933dad1 2692or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
e411ce4b
EZ
2693
2694** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
2695terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
2696to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
2697overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
2698horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
2699support a vertical-bar cursor).
e33b0397
DL
2700^L
2701* Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
2702
2703** Not new, but not mentioned before:
2704M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
a933dad1
DL
2705\f
2706* Changes in Emacs 20.4
2707
2708** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
2709
2710You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
2711Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
2712`.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
2713
2714If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
2715is the one that is used.
2716
2717** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
2718the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
2719Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
2720separate from the command's regular output.
2721Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
2722says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
2723In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
2724the buffer name.
2725
2726When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
2727output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
2728it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
2729cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
2730
2731** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
2732the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
2733is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
2734created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
2735
2736** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
2737example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
2738match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
2739quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
2740
2741** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
2742now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
2743if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
2744they never ignore case.
2745
2746** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
2747under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
2748applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
2749of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
2750just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
2751convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
2752part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
2753
2754If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
2755the same format that was used in the file before.
2756
2757You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
2758`inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
2759
2760** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
2761renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
2762This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
2763
2764** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
2765The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
2766buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2767your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2768is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2769end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2770Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2771
2772The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2773eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2774control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2775format. You can now customize these variables.
2776
2777** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2778filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2779filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2780enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2781
2782** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2783in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2784windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2785
2786** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2787dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2788doesn't have any effect.
2789
2790** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2791not one per buffer.
2792
2793** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2794use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2795 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2796
2797** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2798To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2799`auto-show-mode' command.
2800
2801** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2802avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2803versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2804choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2805occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2806
2807** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2808cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2809
2810** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2811character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2812feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2813
2814** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2815the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2816interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2817and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2818
2819** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2820
2821The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2822that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2823one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2824codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2825set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2826
2827Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2828from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2829
2830IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2831equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2832a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2833`?' on other systems.
2834
2835IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2836feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2837Unix.
2838
2839Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2840current codepage when it starts.
2841
2842** Mail changes
2843
feab4fba
GM
2844*** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
2845`mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
2846appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
2847non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
2848MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
2849headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
2850latin-1:
2851
2852 MIME-version: 1.0
2853 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
2854 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
2855
a933dad1
DL
2856*** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2857default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2858default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2859sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2860buffer-file-coding-system.
2861
2862You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2863sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2864mail.
2865
2866*** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2867if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2868Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2869list of possible coding systems.
2870
2871** CC Mode changes
2872
2873*** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2874modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2875longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2876docstring for details.
2877
2878*** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2879symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2880found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2881prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2882lineup functions use this feature currently.
2883
2884*** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2885"finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2886
2887*** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2888"catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2889
2890*** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2891from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2892symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2893c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2894anonymous classes.
2895
2896*** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2897syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2898
2899*** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2900inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2901support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2902function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2903
2904*** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2905(i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2906brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2907c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2908(brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2909
2910*** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2911
2912*** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2913
2914*** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2915for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2916
2917*** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2918
2919*** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2920associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2921This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2922circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2923class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2924
2925** Gnus changes.
2926
2927*** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2928added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2929Gnus manual for the full story.
2930
2931*** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2932before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2933group, which is created automatically.
2934
2935*** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2936values.
2937
2938*** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2939
2940*** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2941outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2942
2943*** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2944`C-u C-c C-c'.
2945
2946*** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2947
2948*** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2949re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2950
2951*** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2952
2953*** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2954Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2955
2956*** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2957`a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2958
2959*** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2960control over simplification.
2961
2962*** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2963
2964*** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2965limit.
2966
2967*** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2968
2969*** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2970
79214ddf 2971*** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
a933dad1
DL
2972If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2973rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2974
2975*** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2976`a' forces normal posting method.
2977
2978*** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2979-- `W d'.
2980
2981*** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2982to a non-nil value.
2983
2984*** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2985where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2986
2987*** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2988has been added.
2989
2990*** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2991
2992*** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2993
2994*** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2995`gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2996
2997*** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2998`message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2999
3000*** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3001
3002*** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3003been added.
3004
3005*** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3006`gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3007
3008*** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3009updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3010
3011*** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3012
3013*** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3014
3015*** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3016
3017** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3018
3019*** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3020options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3021nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3022
3023*** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3024TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3025of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3026TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3027can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3028
3029*** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3030All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3031but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3032the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3033
3034*** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3035the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3036buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3037mismatch.
3038
3039** Changes to RefTeX mode
3040
3041*** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3042file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3043
3044*** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3045lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3046characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3047removed from the label.
3048
3049*** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3050a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3051
3052*** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3053customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3054
3055*** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3056`reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
79214ddf 3057expressions.
a933dad1
DL
3058
3059*** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3060
3061** New/deleted modes and packages
3062
3063*** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3064SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3065
3066*** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3067editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3068SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3069
3070*** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3071changes with a special face.
3072
3073*** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3074this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3075Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3076\f
3077* MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3078
3079** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3080This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3081conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3082and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3083check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3084
3085The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3086Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3087distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3088
3089** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3090MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3091controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3092directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3093Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3094on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3095string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3096program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3097printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3098
3099** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3100output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3101available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3102input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3103temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3104program.
3105
3106An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3107and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3108programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3109automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3110as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3111ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3112
3113** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3114a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3115MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3116was not documented clearly before.
3117
3118** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3119This includes Tetris and Snake.
3120\f
3121* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3122
3123** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3124return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3125They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3126meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3127
3128** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3129WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3130and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3131
3132** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3133
3134*** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3135It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3136
3137*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3138the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3139integers.
3140
3141** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3142files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3143arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3144file names and attributes are returned.
3145
3146** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3147sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3148accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3149It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3150returns the result.
3151
3152** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3153to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3154
3155** New functions for base64 conversion:
3156
3157The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3158into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3159performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3160optionally.
3161
3162Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3163job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3164
3165**
3166The new function process-running-child-p
3167will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3168terminal to its own child process.
3169
3170** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3171when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3172to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3173itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3174
3175** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3176be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3177
3178** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3179:included is an alias for :visible.
3180
3181easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3182easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3183to move or copy menu entries.
3184
3185** Multibyte editing changes
3186
3187*** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3188an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3189make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3190work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3191char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3192 (setq char (sref str idx)
3193 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3194The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3195
3196If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3197(say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3198 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3199
3200*** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3201region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3202deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3203
3204 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3205
3206This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3207across the boundary.
3208
3209*** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3210`unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3211 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3212 contains 8-bit characters.
3213 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3214 contains invalid characters.
3215
3216*** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3217text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3218preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3219text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3220way.
3221
3222*** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3223If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3224end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3225prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3226
3227*** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3228compose Thai characters in a string.
3229
3230** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3231argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3232for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
3233menus should always use the third argument.
3234
3235** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
3236read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
3237arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
3238input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
3239
3240** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
3241of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
3242programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
3243inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
3244
3245** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
3246the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
3247returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
3248echo area contents.
3249
3250 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
3251
3252** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
3253NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
3254requested feature cannot be loaded.
3255
3256** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
3257foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
79214ddf 3258means to clear out that attribute.
a933dad1
DL
3259
3260** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
3261gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
3262
3263** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
3264read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
3265unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
3266end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
3267
3268** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
3269the gap of the current buffer.
3270
3271** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
3272to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
3273current buffer.
3274
3275** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
3276facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
3277These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
3278it back in after any modifications have been made.
3279\f
3280* Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
3281
3282** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
3283the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
3284/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
3285directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
3286subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
3287
3288Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
3289names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
3290Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
3291which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
3292these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
3293
3294Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
3295starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
3296time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
3297
3298This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
3299Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
3300to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
3301subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
3302`.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
3303results.
3304
3305** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
3306GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
3307that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
3308fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
3309\f
3310* Changes in Emacs 20.3
3311
3312** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
3313including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
3314it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
3315perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
3316
3317** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
3318specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
3319region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
3320further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
3321command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
3322within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
3323are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
3324region.
3325
3326In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
3327selective undo.
3328
3329** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
3330unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
3331buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
3332effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
3333Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
3334
3335The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
3336though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
3337-*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
3338load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
3339
3340** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
3341no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
3342enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
3343something that most users not do.
3344
3345** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
3346operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
3347The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
3348applications.
3349
3350C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
3351pasting operations.
3352
3353** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
3354setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
3355like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
3356printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
3357`ps-printer-name'.
3358
3359** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
3360minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
3361any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
3362except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
3363incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
3364hits a new word.
3365
3366Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
3367Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
3368to be confused by TeX commands.
3369
3370You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
3371correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
3372clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
3373of various alternative replacements and actions.
3374
3375Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
3376the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
3377corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
3378alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
3379flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
3380
3381Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
3382flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
3383
3384** Changes in input method usage.
3385
3386Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
3387the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
3388respectively.
3389
3390You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
3391
3392If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
3393of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
3394
3395The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
3396that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
3397
3398 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
3399
3400 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
3401
3402 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
3403 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
3404
3405 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
79214ddf 3406 given in the following case:
a933dad1
DL
3407 o When you are using a complex input method.
3408 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
3409
3410If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
3411input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
3412and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
3413setting it to t is helpful.
3414
3415The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
3416
3417In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
3418keys:
3419 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
3420 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
3421 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
3422These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
3423environment.
3424
3425** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
3426names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
3427minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
3428get
3429
3430 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
3431
3432which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
3433
3434Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
3435Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
3436
3437** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
3438at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
3439its owner and group.
3440
3441** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
3442Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
3443
3444** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
3445contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
3446
3447** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
3448which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
3449in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
3450by the left edge of the rectangle.
3451
3452** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
3453increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
3454C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
3455for writing keyboard macros.
3456
3457** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
3458files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
3459frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
3460the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
3461additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
3462info.
3463
3464** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
3465
3466** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
3467query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
3468contents only.
3469
3470** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
3471confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
3472the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
3473says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
3474
3475** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
3476non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
3477literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
3478
3479** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
3480now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
3481Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
3482inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
3483
3484** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
3485failure if the command produces no output.
3486
3487** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
3488manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
3489the mouse.
3490
3491** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
3492mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
3493function and variable names.
3494
3495** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
3496reading specific files. This has higher priority than
3497file-coding-system-alist.
3498
3499** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
3500t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
3501converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
3502the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
3503according to the current fontset.
3504
3505** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
3506
3507The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
3508that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
3509nonascii-insert-offset.
3510
3511For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
3512enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
3513nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
3514characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
3515
3516** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
3517an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
3518
3519** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
3520letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
3521
3522** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
3523are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
3524command keys.
3525
3526** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
3527user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
3528
3529Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
3530user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
3531all variables that have documentation.
3532
3533** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
3534shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
3535that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
3536minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
3537it should show; the default is 20.
3538
3539Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
3540the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
3541of your input.
3542
3543** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
3544all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
3545recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
3546argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
3547the customizable options which were changed since that version.
3548Newly added options are included as well.
3549
3550If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
3551then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
3552for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
3553
3554This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
3555Customize menu.
3556
3557** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
3558the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
3559
3560** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
3561buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
3562invoked.
3563
3564** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
3565that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
3566The default is 1.
3567
3568** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
3569syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
3570new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
3571(C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
3572sensibly.
3573
3574** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
3575
3576** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
3577value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
3578two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
3579
3580** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
3581reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
3582for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
3583every night.
3584
3585** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
3586the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
3587
3588** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
3589read and post multi-lingual articles.
3590
3591** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
3592doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
3593be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
3594outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
3595the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
79214ddf 3596made invisible again.
a933dad1
DL
3597
3598** Mail reading and sending changes
3599
3600*** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
3601the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
3602changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
3603toggle.
3604
3605*** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
3606now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
3607summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
3608the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
3609rmail-default-body-file.
3610
3611*** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
3612longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
3613handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
3614
3615*** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
3616it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
3617is evaluated to insert the signature.
3618
3619*** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
3620outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
3621handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
3622putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
3623transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
3624especially interested in trying feedmail.
3625
3626feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
3627feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
3628provided by feedmail are:
3629
3630**** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
3631stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
3632there is also a queue for draft messages
3633
3634**** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
3635be prompted for confirmation
3636
3637**** does smart filling of address headers
3638
3639**** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
3640the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
3641can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
3642
3643**** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
3644the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
3645/usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
3646function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
3647
3648** Dired changes
3649
3650*** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
3651files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
3652
3653*** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
3654run Dired on the directory name at point.
3655
3656*** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
3657files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
3658for a specified regexp.
3659
3660** VC Changes
3661
3662*** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
3663conveniently.
3664
3665*** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
3666faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
3667Dired.
3668
3669VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
3670directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
3671listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
3672currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
3673
3674You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
3675then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
3676vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
3677control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
3678on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
3679
3680All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
3681is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
3682`v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
3683the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
3684`vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
3685
3686The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
3687toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
79214ddf 3688VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
a933dad1
DL
3689`* l', to mark all files currently locked.
3690
3691Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
3692ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
3693command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
3694
3695*** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
3696file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
3697session to resolve them.
3698
3699Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
3700resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
3701contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
3702uses as well).
3703
3704*** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
3705command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
3706you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
3707either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
3708branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
3709If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
3710using ediff.
3711
3712** Changes in Font Lock
3713
3714*** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
3715are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
3716use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
3717unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
3718compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
3719
3720** Frame name display changes
3721
3722*** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
3723frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
3724raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
3725when many frames are invisible or iconified.
3726
3727*** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
3728frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
3729menu.
3730
3731** Comint (subshell) changes
3732
3733*** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
3734subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
3735with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
3736
3737*** There are new commands in Comint mode.
3738
3739C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
3740that is, the line after the last line you got.
3741You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
3742
3743C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
3744send the current line together with the following line, when you send
3745the following line.
3746
3747C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
3748which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
3749previously sent input.
3750
3751C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
3752it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
3753as the search string.
3754
3755*** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
3756automatically in compilation-mode windows.
3757
3758** C mode changes
3759
3760*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
3761and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
3762assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
79214ddf 3763definition.
a933dad1
DL
3764
3765*** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
3766(i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
3767Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
3768style is still the default however.
3769
3770*** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
3771
3772*** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
3773are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
3774them. They do not have key bindings by default.
3775
3776*** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
3777and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
3778
3779*** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3780namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3781
3782*** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3783makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3784
3785*** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3786c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3787
3788*** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3789should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3790package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3791variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3792
3793** Changes to hippie-expand.
3794
79214ddf 3795*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
a933dad1
DL
3796non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3797which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3798
3799*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3800non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3801expanding dynamically.
3802
3803*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3804non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3805
3806*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3807non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3808this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3809expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3810
3811*** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3812
3813** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3814
3815*** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3816bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3817automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3818bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3819against the first word in the title.
3820
3821*** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3822capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3823bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
79214ddf 3824lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
a933dad1 3825lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
79214ddf 3826bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
a933dad1
DL
3827
3828*** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3829generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3830replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3831bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3832
3833** Changes in vcursor.el.
3834
3835*** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3836and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3837variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3838entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3839`vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3840in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3841
3842*** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3843Editing group once the package is loaded.
3844
3845*** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3846generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3847vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3848
3849*** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3850vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3851
3852** Ispell changes.
3853
79214ddf
FP
3854*** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3855buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
a933dad1
DL
3856are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3857
3858*** Generic region skipping implemented.
3859A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3860and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3861defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
79214ddf 3862include:
a933dad1
DL
3863
3864 o URLs are automatically skipped
3865 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3866
3867*** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3868
3869** Changes to RefTeX mode
3870
3871RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3872large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3873re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3874section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3875
3876*** New recursive parser.
3877
3878The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3879entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3880recursive parser scans the individual files.
3881
3882*** Parsing only part of a document.
79214ddf 3883
a933dad1
DL
3884Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3885partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3886the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3887
3888 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3889
3890*** Storing parsing information in a file.
3891
3892This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3893
3894 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3895
3896*** Using multiple selection buffers
3897
3898If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3899for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3900
3901 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3902
3903*** References to external documents.
3904
3905The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3906documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3907documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3908macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3909RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3910the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3911The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3912
3913*** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3914
3915The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3916and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3917
3918Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3919the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3920
3921*** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3922
3923The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3924buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3925
3926*** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3927
3928The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3929contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3930`reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3931have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3932enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3933at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3934more.
3935
3936*** Support for the varioref package
3937
3938The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3939
3940*** New hooks
3941
3942Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3943and citations are created. These hooks are
3944`reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3945`reftex-format-cite-function'.
3946
3947*** Citations outside LaTeX
3948
3949The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3950a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3951
3952*** Short context is no longer fontified.
3953
3954The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3955fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3956fontified, use
3957
3958 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3959
3960** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3961With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3962the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3963directories that contain the same file name.
3964
3965Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3966Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3967file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3968Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3969have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3970names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3971directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3972directory.
3973
3974** New modes and packages
3975
3976*** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3977It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3978it, but some do not.
3979
3980*** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3981code.
3982
3983*** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3984current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3985around in a buffer.
3986
3987Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3988
3989*** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3990uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3991be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3992established system of notation similar to Chess.
3993
3994*** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3995documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3996guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3997
3998*** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3999available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4000system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4001simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4002functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4003the like.
4004
4005*** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4006identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4007
4008*** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4009within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4010used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4011the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4012
4013*** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4014
4015 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4016 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4017 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4018 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4019 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4020 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4021 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4022 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4023 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4024 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4025 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4026
4027 Platform-specific modes:
4028
4029 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4030 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4031 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4032 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4033 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4034 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4035 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4036 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4037 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4038\f
4039* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4040
4041** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4042use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4043That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4044Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4045
4046Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4047you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4048consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4049
4050** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4051and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4052specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4053searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4054
4055** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4056multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4057character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4058environment.
4059
4060** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4061take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4062string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4063current input method for reading this one event.
4064
4065** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4066now control whether to output certain characters as
4067backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4068non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4069characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4070in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4071\f
4072* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4073
4074** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4075of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4076
4077** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4078in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4079always increases point by 1.
4080
4081The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4082considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4083
4084See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4085
4086** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4087Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4088default value changed. For example,
4089
4090 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4091 :type 'integer
4092 :group 'foo
4093 :version "20.3")
4094
79214ddf 4095 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
a933dad1
DL
4096 :version "20.3")
4097
4098If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4099default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4100is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4101`:version' in the top level group.
4102
4103This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4104
4105** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4106starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4107
4108However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4109symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4110support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4111to themselves.
4112
4113If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4114this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4115values whatever.
4116
4117** There is a new debugger command, R.
4118It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4119in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4120
4121** Frame-local variables.
4122
4123You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4124the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4125local bindings for that variable.
4126
4127These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4128frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4129modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4130parameter name.
4131
4132Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4133Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4134active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4135that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4136
4137It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4138clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4139very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4140through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4141
4142** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4143"symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4144evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4145makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4146See the documentation in sregex.el.
4147
4148** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4149is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4150parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4151The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4152
4153** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4154If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4155
4156** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4157known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4158define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4159
4160** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4161when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4162it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4163history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4164
4165The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4166return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4167empty input.
4168
4169** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4170for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4171`iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4172Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4173`read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4174
4175** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4176echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4177a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4178default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4179
4180** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4181specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4182function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4183place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4184non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4185
4186** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4187If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4188up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4189end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4190
4191** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4192which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4193If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4194
4195** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4196holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4197was directed to display this buffer.
4198
4199** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4200with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4201describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4202other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4203set-window-configuration.
4204
4205** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4206window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4207positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4208windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4209
4210** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4211override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4212look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4213
4214If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4215non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4216map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4217
4218minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4219and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4220
4221** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4222except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4223
4224** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4225USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4226floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4227
4228** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
4229to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
4230in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
4231it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
4232
4233** Menu changes
4234
4235*** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
4236keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
4237better supported.
4238
4239The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
4240a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
4241you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
4242can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
4243then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
4244
4245*** A new format for menu items is supported.
4246
4247In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
4248 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
4249defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
4250starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
4251
4252The format is:
4253 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
4254 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
4255where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
4256string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
4257The supported properties include
4258
4259:enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4260 item is enabled.
4261:visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4262 item should appear in the menu.
79214ddf 4263:filter FILTER-FN
a933dad1
DL
4264 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
4265 which will be REAL-BINDING.
4266 It should return a binding to use instead.
4267:keys DESCRIPTION
4268 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
4269 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
4270 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
4271:key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
4272 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
4273 keyboard binding.
4274:key-sequence nil
4275 This means that the command normally has no
4276 keyboard equivalent.
4277:help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
4278:button (TYPE . SELECTED)
4279 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
4280 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
4281 value says whether this button is currently selected.
4282
4283Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
4284Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
4285
4286(menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
4287
4288** New event types
4289
4290*** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
4291mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
4292corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
4293which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
4294
4295 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
4296
4297where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4298same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
4299indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
4300negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
4301the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
4302forward, away from the user.
4303
4304As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4305
4306*** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
4307files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
4308and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
4309filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
4310loaded into Emacs. The format is:
4311
4312 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
4313
4314where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4315same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
4316that were dragged and dropped.
4317
4318As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4319
4320** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
4321
4322*** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
4323any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
4324to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
4325
4326*** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
4327can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
4328that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
4329
4330*** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
4331in Emacs 19 and before.
4332
4333The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
4334The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
4335
4336*** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
4337buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
4338unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
4339representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
4340
4341This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
4342as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
4343viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
4344one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
4345will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
4346
4347This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
4348representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
4349(including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
4350consistent with the new representation.
4351
4352*** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
4353representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
4354about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
4355however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4356
4357The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
4358nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
4359using the table nonascii-translation-table.
4360
4361*** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
4362representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
4363representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4364
4365The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
4366loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
4367is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
4368
4369*** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4370which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
4371
4372*** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4373which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
4374
4375*** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
4376portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
4377so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
4378You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
4379
4380*** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
4381it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
4382
4383*** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
4384convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
4385buffer or string being searched.
4386
4387One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
4388[...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
4389searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
4390searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
4391obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
4392you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
4393expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
4394
4395*** Structure of coding system changed.
4396
4397All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
4398by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
4399which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
4400as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
4401vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
4402your own alias name of a coding system by the function
4403define-coding-system-alias.
4404
4405The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
4406the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
4407access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
4408pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
4409character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
4410safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
4411'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
4412`iso-8859-1'.
4413
4414Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
4415The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
4416coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
4417(coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
4418
4419Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
4420also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
4421are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
4422the other character sets and read it back correctly.
4423
4424*** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
4425proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
4426This function requires a user interaction.
4427
4428*** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
4429find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
4430select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
4431systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
4432a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
4433select-safe-coding-system.
4434
4435*** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
4436decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
4437last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
4438was done.
4439
4440*** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
4441used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
4442coding systems used by some specific language environment.
4443
4444*** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
4445return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
4446characters are found, they now return a list of single element
4447`undecided' or its subsidiaries.
4448
4449*** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
4450coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
4451coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
4452converted.
4453
4454*** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
4455coding system for communicating with other X clients.
4456
4457*** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
4458character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
4459character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
4460each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
4461either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
4462range of characters.
4463
4464*** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
4465Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
4466
4467*** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
4468in the current buffer at position POS.
4469
4470*** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
4471input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
4472function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
4473character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
4474event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
4475binding input-method-function to nil.
4476
4477The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
4478method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
4479input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
4480the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
4481not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
4482
4483The input method function is not called when reading the second and
4484subsequent events of a key sequence.
4485
4486*** You can customize any language environment by using
4487set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
4488
4489The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
4490customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
4491instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
4492environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
4493exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
4494\f
4495* Changes in Emacs 20.1
4496
4497** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
4498options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
4499at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
4500tree structure.
4501
4502M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
4503user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
4504
4505With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
4506session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
4507in your .emacs file.)
4508
4509** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
4510You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
4511
4512** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
4513This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
4514
4515** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
4516immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
4517kills the region.
4518
4519The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
4520delete the character before point, as usual.
4521
4522** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
4523on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
4524by setting search-highlight to nil.)
4525
4526** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
4527insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
4528the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
4529onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
4530history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
4531past.)
4532
4533** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
4534This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
4535in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
4536TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
4537makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
4538
4539As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
4540and is an alias for it.
4541
4542If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
4543use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
4544
4545** Scrolling changes
4546
4547*** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
4548position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
4549
4550In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
4551on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
4552where it started.
4553
4554*** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
4555move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
4556screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
4557does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
4558
4559*** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
4560top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
4561comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
4562recenters the window.
4563
4564** International character set support (MULE)
4565
4566Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
4567including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
4568Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
4569Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
4570features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
4571MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
4572
4573Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
4574coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
4575character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
4576variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
4577into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
4578
4579Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
4580generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
4581supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
4582language, to make it possible to type them.
4583
4584The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
4585character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
4586
4587The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
4588to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
4589
4590You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
4591
4592 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
4593
4594Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
4595characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
4596argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
4597already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
4598characters for their work until they want to change.
4599
4600*** Input methods
4601
4602An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
4603specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
4604has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
4605the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
4606support several input methods.
4607
4608The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
4609another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
4610work.
4611
4612A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
4613characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
4614composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
4615consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
4616sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
4617letter.
4618
4619The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
4620by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
4621First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
4622marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
4623mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
4624
4625None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
4626they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
4627phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
4628converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
4629
4630Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
4631word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
4632typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
4633the first guess is wrong.
4634
4635*** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
4636turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
4637
4638If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
4639byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
4640they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
4641the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
4642
4643However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
4644use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
4645includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
4646translate automatically to and from either one.
4647
4648*** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
4649
4650Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
4651file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
4652sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
4653what you want.
4654
4655If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
4656example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
4657system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
4658multibyte characters in that buffer.
4659
4660If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
4661character conversion as well.
4662
4663*** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
4664
4665A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
4666Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
4667requires using many fonts.
4668
4669Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
4670collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
4671
4672A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
4673the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
4674have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
4675you would use a font.
4676
4677If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
4678specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
4679display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
4680
4681The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
4682(that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
4683characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
4684or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
4685and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
4686
4687*** Defining fontsets.
4688
4689Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
4690chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
4691with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
4692
4693Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
4694of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
4695`fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
4696standard fontset are created automatically.
4697
4698If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
4699argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
4700FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
4701with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
4702name is `fontset-startup'.
4703
4704Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
4705The resource value should have this form:
4706 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
4707FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
4708 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
4709 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
4710 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
4711The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
4712of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
4713CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
4714FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
4715
4716Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
4717last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
4718You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
4719
4720For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
4721font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
4722following resource,
4723 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
4724the font for ASCII is generated as below:
4725 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
4726Here is the substitution rule:
4727 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
4728 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
4729 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
4730 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
4731 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
4732
4733The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
4734fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
4735that function explicitly to create a fontset.
4736
4737With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
4738like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
4739name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
4740fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
4741fontsets.
4742
4743*** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
4744defaults for a particular choice of language.
4745
4746Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
4747method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
4748visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
4749already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
4750language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
4751system for new files that you create.
4752
4753It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
4754set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
4755whole Emacs session.
4756
4757For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
4758chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
4759with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
4760
4761*** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
4762specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
4763specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
4764the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
4765coding systems that Emacs supports.
4766
4767*** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
4768lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
4769This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
4770After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
4771is used for *the immediately following command*.
4772
4773So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
4774write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
4775
4776If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
4777then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
4778
4779For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4780visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4781
4782*** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4783construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4784to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4785specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4786of the file.
4787
4788*** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4789the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4790code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4791translated into that character code.
4792
4793This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4794various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4795
4796By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4797
4798*** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4799the coding system for keyboard input.
4800
4801Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4802with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4803some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4804
4805By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4806
4807Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4808input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4809translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4810to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4811designed to work with terminals.
4812
4813*** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4814specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4815This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4816has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4817translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4818in the corresponding buffer.
4819
4820By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4821
4822*** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4823to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4824It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4825
4826*** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4827an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4828command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4829want to use.
4830
4831C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4832method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4833
4834*** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4835layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4836remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4837which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4838
4839*** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4840the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4841related information.
4842
4843*** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4844HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4845scripts.
4846
4847*** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4848information about the support for a particular language.
4849You specify the language as an argument.
4850
4851*** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4852the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4853first dash.
4854
4855A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4856(except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4857whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
48581 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4859
4860 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4861 B big5 (Chinese)
4862 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4863 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4864 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4865 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4866 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4867 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4868 K euc-korea (Korean)
4869 R koi8 (Russian)
4870 Q tibetan
4871 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4872 T lao
4873 T tis620 (Thai)
4874 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4875 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4876 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4877 v viqr (Vietnamese)
4878 z hz (Chinese)
4879
4880When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4881two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4882coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4883keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4884
4885*** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4886conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4887
4888When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4889into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4890rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4891Rmail files themselves.
4892
4893*** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4894conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4895
4896Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4897for sending mail:
4898
4899- If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4900- Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4901- Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4902 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4903- Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4904
4905*** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4906to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4907Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4908translations.
4909
4910** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4911of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4912insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4913without any conversion.
4914
4915** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4916You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4917RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4918any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4919
4920** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4921functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4922
4923Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4924Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4925
4926Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4927mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4928
4929** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4930complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4931in the buffer before point.
4932
4933With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4934symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4935you are using.
4936
4937With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4938just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4939
4940** File locking works with NFS now.
4941
4942The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4943in the same directory as FILENAME.
4944
4945This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4946works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4947can become a bottleneck.
4948
4949The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4950does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4951create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4952file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4953rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4954so useful that the change is worth while.
4955
4956When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4957are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4958collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4959tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4960
4961** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4962it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4963show-paren-mode.
4964
4965** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4966selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4967delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4968
4969** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4970within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4971complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4972
4973** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4974it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4975set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4976
4977** Changes in View mode.
4978
4979*** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4980Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4981
4982*** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4983view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4984
4985*** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4986previous state.
4987
4988*** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4989scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4990
4991*** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4992non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4993not just the selected window.
4994
4995*** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4996read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4997turns View mode on or off.
4998
4999*** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5000how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5001delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5002
5003** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5004now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5005
5006** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5007has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5008presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5009which version to compare with.
5010
5011** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
79214ddf 5012blocks if a match is inside the block.
a933dad1
DL
5013
5014The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5015is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5016isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5017shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5018
5019By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5020of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5021blocks, all of them or none.
5022
5023** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5024current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5025confirmation first.
5026
5027** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5028now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5029However, the mode will not be changed if
5030(1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5031(2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5032 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5033(3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5034
5035This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5036
5037However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5038these commands do not change the major mode.
5039
5040** M-x occur changes.
5041
5042*** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5043it performs a case-sensitive search.
5044
5045*** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5046if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5047using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5048
5049** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5050in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5051window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5052that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5053buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5054
5055** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5056after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5057appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5058come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5059
5060** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5061selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5062buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5063
5064** Outline mode changes.
5065
5066*** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5067
5068*** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5069
5070** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5071you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5072Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5073was already active.
5074
5075The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5076unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5077get confused by it.
5078
5079If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5080set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5081
5082** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5083
5084*** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5085conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5086character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5087including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5088
5089The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5090mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5091copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5092
5093*** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5094are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5095values.
5096
5097`dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5098case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5099`dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5100case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5101
5102** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5103certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5104can be. The default value is 30.
5105
5106** Changes in Mail mode.
5107
5108*** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5109Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5110composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5111`mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5112`sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5113behavior.
5114
5115C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5116compose-mail-other-frame.
5117
5118*** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5119the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5120replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5121buffer that shows the original message.
5122
5123*** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5124with separator lines around the contents.
5125
5126*** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5127in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5128definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5129need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5130
5131*** New features in the mail-complete command.
5132
5133**** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5134for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5135controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5136Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5137
5138**** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5139to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5140/etc/passwd.
5141
5142**** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5143to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5144/etc/passwd.
5145
5146** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5147special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5148directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5149reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5150
5151Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5152when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5153be taken to be magic.
5154
5155** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5156files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5157available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5158
5159M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5160(-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5161
5162** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5163suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5164
5165In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5166
5167new key dired.el binding old key
5168------- ---------------- -------
5169 * c dired-change-marks c
5170 * m dired-mark m
5171 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5172 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5173 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5174 * u dired-unmark u
5175 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5176 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5177 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5178 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5179 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5180 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5181
5182** Rmail changes.
5183
5184*** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5185saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5186chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5187each time you run it.
5188
5189*** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5190whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5191
5192*** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5193messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5194means to move in the opposite direction.
5195
5196*** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5197you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5198
5199*** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5200just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5201It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5202can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5203for output.
5204
5205** Gnus changes.
5206
5207*** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5208
79214ddf
FP
5209*** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5210Gnus.
a933dad1 5211
79214ddf 5212*** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
a933dad1
DL
5213`and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5214
5215*** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5216article mode line.
5217
5218*** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5219
5220*** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5221
5222(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5223
5224*** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5225are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5226`gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5227
5228*** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
5229
5230*** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
5231
5232*** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
5233See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
5234
5235*** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
5236Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
5237used to pick articles.
5238
5239*** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
5240another have been added.
5241
5242 `M-x gnus-change-server'
5243
5244*** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
5245generating lines in buffers.
5246
5247*** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
5248`M-C-_'.
5249
5250*** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
5251
5252*** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
5253
5254 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
5255
5256*** Scores can be decayed.
79214ddf 5257
a933dad1
DL
5258 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
5259
5260*** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
5261Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
5262
5263*** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
5264the native server.
5265
5266 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
5267
5268*** A new command for reading collections of documents
5269(nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
5270
5271*** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
5272
5273*** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
5274even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
5275
5276*** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
5277(DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
5278
5279 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
5280 a group.
5281
5282*** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
5283sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
5284
5285 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
5286
5287*** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
5288
5289 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
5290
5291*** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
79214ddf 5292
a933dad1
DL
5293 Use the `Y c' command.
5294
5295*** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
5296
5297*** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
5298
5299 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
5300
5301*** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
5302from incoming mail before saving the mail.
79214ddf 5303
a933dad1
DL
5304 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
5305
5306*** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
5307
5308*** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
5309the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
5310
5311 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
5312
5313Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
5314and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
5315from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
5316hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
5317this issue.)
5318
5319Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
5320automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
5321particular news group. This can be done by:
5322
5323 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
5324
5325Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
5326of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
5327"XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
5328system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
5329for reading and posting).
5330
5331CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
5332 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
5333Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
5334newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
5335there.
5336
5337Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
5338default. Here are some of these default settings:
5339
5340 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
5341 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
5342 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
5343 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
5344 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
5345
5346When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
5347the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
5348
5349** CC mode changes.
5350
5351*** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
5352code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
5353values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
5354this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
5355Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
5356loaded.
5357
5358If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
79214ddf 5359Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
a933dad1 5360style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
79214ddf
FP
5361share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
5362c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
a933dad1
DL
5363must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
5364
5365*** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
5366of the current buffer.
5367
5368*** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
5369it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
5370of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
5371
5372*** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
5373style that the Python developers like.
5374
5375*** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
5376This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
5377just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
5378
5379** VC Changes [new]
5380
5381** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
5382name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
5383directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
5384
5385This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
5386master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
5387developers.
5388
5389You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
5390RET in a buffer visiting that file.
5391
5392*** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
5393other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
5394writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
5395calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
5396
5397*** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
5398version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
5399
5400** Calendar changes.
5401
5402A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
5403of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
5404for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
5405
5406** ps-print changes
5407
79214ddf 5408There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
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5409
5410*** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
5411
5412The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
5413formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
5414`a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
5415`ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
5416It defaults to `letter'.
5417If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
5418
5419The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
79214ddf 5420of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
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5421non-nil means "landscape" mode.
5422
5423The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
5424It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
79214ddf 5425It defaults to 1.
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DL
5426
5427*** Horizontal layout
5428
5429The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
5430`ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
5431All are measured in points.
5432
5433*** Vertical layout
5434
5435The vertical layout is determined by the variables
5436`ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
5437All are measured in points.
5438
5439*** Headers
5440
5441If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
5442`ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
5443margin above the text.
5444
79214ddf 5445If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
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5446framing box is printed around the header.
5447
5448The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
5449`ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
5450
79214ddf
FP
5451The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
5452`ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
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5453`ps-header-font-size'.
5454
5455*** Font managing
5456
5457The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
5458used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
5459`ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
5460elements to this alist.
5461
79214ddf 5462The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
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5463for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
5464
5465** hideshow changes.
5466
5467*** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
79214ddf 5468C++, ; for lisp).
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5469
5470*** Support for java-mode added.
5471
5472*** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
5473in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
5474
5475*** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
5476the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
5477way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
5478
5479*** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
5480robust and a lot faster.
5481
79214ddf 5482*** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
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5483
5484*** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
5485to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
5486documentation for more details.
5487
5488** Changes in Enriched mode.
5489
5490*** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
5491filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
5492of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
5493use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
5494the next time unless the fill-column is different.
5495
5496*** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
5497distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
5498as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
5499as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
5500
5501** Font Lock mode
5502
5503*** Custom support
5504
5505The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
5506font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
5507faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
5508group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
5509your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
5510consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
5511
5512You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
5513
5514*** Maximum decoration
5515
5516Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
5517default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
5518of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
5519supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
5520to get the old behavior.
5521
5522*** New support
5523
5524Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
5525
5526Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
5527support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
5528
5529*** Configurable support
5530
5531Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
5532additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
5533c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
5534java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
5535list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
5536of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
5537convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
5538
5539Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
5540way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
5541it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
5542
5543*** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
5544
5545You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
5546highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
5547for any mode.
5548
5549For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
5550
5551 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
5552
5553in your ~/.emacs.
5554
5555*** New faces
5556
5557Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
5558font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
5559distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
5560to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
5561
5562*** Changes to fast-lock support mode
5563
5564The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
5565cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
5566same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
5567
5568*** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
5569
5570The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
5571according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
5572the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
5573non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
5574refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
5575the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
5576Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
5577
5578This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
5579For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
5580this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
5581refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
5582containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
5583the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
5584
5585As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
5586
5587Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
5588Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
5589Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
5590new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
5591
5592If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
5593settings.
5594
5595** Ada mode changes.
5596
5597*** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
5598If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
5599procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
5600you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
5601stubs.
5602
5603*** There are two new commands:
5604 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
5605 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
5606
5607The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
5608`ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
79214ddf 5609`ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
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5610
5611*** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
5612is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
5613Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
5614
5615*** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
5616formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
5617places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
5618space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
5619
5620** Scheme mode changes.
5621
5622*** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
5623mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
5624for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
5625with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
5626have any effect.
5627
5628If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
5629still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
5630scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
5631variables as buffer-local variables.
5632
5633*** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
5634Use M-x dsssl-mode.
5635
133c9e59
GM
5636** Changes to the emacsclient program
5637
875c1439
GM
5638*** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
5639USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
5640associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
5641can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
5642
133c9e59 5643*** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
a933dad1
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5644it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
5645buffer in Emacs.
5646
133c9e59
GM
5647*** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
5648use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
5649ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
5650option takes precedence.
5651
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DL
5652** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
5653constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
5654(in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
5655
5656** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
5657which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
5658the current defun.
5659
5660** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
5661following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
5662
5663** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
5664and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
5665necessary).
5666
5667** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
5668if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
5669these register values no longer become completely useless.
5670If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
5671asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
5672it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
5673
5674** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
5675example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
5676be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
5677you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
5678
5679You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
5680variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
5681file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
5682revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
5683only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
5684
5685** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
5686since it applies only to the current frame.
5687
5688** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
5689file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
5690and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
5691
5692This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
5693multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
5694variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
5695tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
5696instead of just the file you are editing.
5697
5698** RefTeX mode
5699
5700RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
5701and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
5702different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
5703multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
5704turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
5705
79214ddf 5706C-c ( reftex-label
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DL
5707 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
5708 knows which kind of label is needed.
5709
5710C-c ) reftex-reference
5711 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
5712 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
5713
5714C-c [ reftex-citation
5715 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
5716 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
5717
5718C-c & reftex-view-crossref
5719 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
5720
5721C-c = reftex-toc
5722 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
5723 can quickly jump to every section.
79214ddf 5724
a933dad1
DL
5725Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
5726commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
5727Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
5728reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
5729C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
5730
5731** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5732
5733*** Info documentation is now available.
5734
5735*** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
5736both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
5737
5738*** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
5739bibtex-user-optional-fields.
5740
5741*** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
5742(use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
5743
5744*** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
5745entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
5746appropriate functions.
5747
5748*** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
5749entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
5750
5751*** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
5752been cleaned.
5753
5754*** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
5755bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
5756
5757*** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
5758shall be delimited.
5759
5760*** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
5761bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
5762bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
5763
5764*** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
5765field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
5766prefixed with `ALT'.
5767
5768*** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
5769bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
5770formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
5771documentation).
5772
5773*** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
5774documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
5775for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
5776
5777*** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
5778comma should be inserted at end of last field.
5779
5780*** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
5781alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
5782signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
5783
5784*** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
5785
5786*** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
5787
5788*** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
5789from alien sources.
5790
5791*** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5792to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5793crossref entries.
5794
5795*** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5796region.
5797
5798*** Added support for imenu.
5799
5800*** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5801of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5802`compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5803`next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5804
5805*** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5806from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5807
5808** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5809
30a009a5 5810** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
047f434a 5811
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5812** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5813functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5814Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5815as an argument.
5816
5817When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5818and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5819
5820** browse-url changes
5821
5822*** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5823Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5824(browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5825non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5826customization variables.
5827
5828*** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5829
5830*** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5831lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5832(e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5833
5834** Changes in Ediff
5835
5836*** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5837pops up the Info file for this command.
5838
5839*** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5840the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5841merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
5842directories).
5843
5844*** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
5845and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
5846files in the same directory.
5847
5848*** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
5849The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5850related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5851
5852** Changes in Viper
5853
5854*** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
79214ddf 5855*** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
a933dad1
DL
5856 instead of vip-.
5857*** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
79214ddf 5858*** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
a933dad1
DL
5859Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5860*** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5861*** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5862*** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5863color when Viper is in insert state.
5864*** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5865Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5866viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5867
5868** Etags changes.
5869
5870*** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5871default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5872Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5873variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5874not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5875
5876*** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5877
5878*** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5879constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5880
5881*** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5882recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5883In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5884
5885*** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5886C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5887recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5888methods and protocols.
5889
5890*** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5891.cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5892column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5893paragraph name.
5894
5895*** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5896an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5897at least M times and as many as N times.
5898
5899** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5900in files has changed slightly.
5901
5902With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5903time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5904This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5905with old time-stamp-format values.
5906
5907In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5908(`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5909This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5910reasons.
5911
5912In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5913natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5914fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5915(`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5916time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5917specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5918
5919Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5920case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5921truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5922
5923The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5924being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5925future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5926recommended now will continue to work then.
5927
5928See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5929details.
5930
5931** There are some additional major modes:
5932
5933dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5934m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5935meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5936
5937** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5938copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5939into Emacs.
5940
5941** New Lisp packages include:
5942
5943*** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5944
5945*** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5946be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5947
5948*** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5949
5950*** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5951in shell buffers.
5952
5953*** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5954See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5955and `elint-defun'.
5956
5957*** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5958meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5959ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5960strings or comments.
5961
5962These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5963abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5964you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5965insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5966at these points.
5967
5968*** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5969can visit them by short forms of their names.
5970
5971*** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5972Emacs Lisp function at point.
5973
5974*** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5975
5976*** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5977switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5978
5979*** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5980
5981*** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5982
5983*** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5984
5985*** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5986from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5987
5988*** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5989You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5990inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5991original place after inserting the copy.
5992
5993*** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5994on the buffer.
5995
5996You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5997velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5998(with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5999
6000Enable mouse-drag with:
6001 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6002-or-
6003 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6004
6005*** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6006mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6007
6008*** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6009It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6010
6011*** ogonek
6012
6013The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6014Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6015platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6016TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6017ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6018prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6019instance) and vice versa.
6020
6021To use this package load it using
6022 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6023Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
79214ddf 6024 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
a933dad1
DL
6025 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6026The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6027ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6028
6029*** Interface to ph.
6030
6031Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6032
6033The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6034services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6035these servers.
6036
6037*** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6038
6039*** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6040You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6041while the real cursor does not move.
6042
6043*** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6044for visiting your favorite web sites.
6045
6046*** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6047so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6048
6049** movemail change
6050
6051Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6052mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6053supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6054user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6055
6056This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6057\f
6058* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6059
6060** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6061
6062Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6063end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6064Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6065file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6066file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6067
6068To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6069C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6070coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6071specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6072LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6073save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6074\f
6075* Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6076
6077** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6078Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6079vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6080Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6081
6082** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6083to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6084
6085In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6086don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6087"win".
6088
6089** Basic Lisp changes
6090
6091*** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6092evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6093
6094*** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6095be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6096or by the user.
6097
6098The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6099
6100*** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6101
6102(when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6103(unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6104
6105*** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6106usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6107its argument.
6108
6109*** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6110
6111*** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6112
6113*** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6114
6115*** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6116error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6117include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6118`format' function.
6119
6120*** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6121or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6122whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6123
6124*** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6125either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6126adding one of these suffixes.
6127
6128*** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6129which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
79214ddf 6130If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
a933dad1
DL
6131
6132We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6133because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6134
6135*** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6136
6137*** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6138You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6139
6140*** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6141conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6142
6143 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6144
6145BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6146BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6147
6148*** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6149choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6150restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6151works using `save-current-buffer'.
6152
6153*** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6154write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6155of the last form.
6156
6157*** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6158which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6159last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6160as the last form.
6161
6162*** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6163characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6164matches.
6165
6166For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6167
6168*** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6169with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6170Then it returns that string.
6171
6172For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6173
6174(with-output-to-string
6175 (princ "The buffer is ")
6176 (princ (buffer-name)))
6177
6178returns "The buffer is foo".
6179
6180** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6181is non-nil.
6182
6183These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6184buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6185characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6186
6187*** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6188a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6189
6190Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6191character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6192Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6193position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6194characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6195 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6196
6197ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6198Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6199non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6200characters".
6201
6202The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6203through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6204"leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6205range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6206leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6207
6208*** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6209(forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6210multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6211character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6212
6213This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6214always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6215
6216However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
79214ddf 6217
a933dad1
DL
6218*** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6219because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6220have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6221the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6222guaranteed.
6223
6224*** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6225between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6226character).
6227
6228When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
6229
6230 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
6231 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
6232 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
6233 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
6234 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
6235
6236*** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
6237
6238*** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
6239`length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
6240more than the number of characters.
6241
6242You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
6243it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
6244\xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
6245is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
6246follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
6247newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
6248
6249*** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
6250and returns a string containing those characters.
6251
6252*** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
6253(sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
6254counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
6255character, sref signals an error.
6256
6257*** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
6258in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
6259string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6260
6261*** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
6262in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
6263region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6264
6265*** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
6266the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
6267to a vector of the characters in it.
6268
6269*** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
6270of a string. You call it as follows:
6271
6272 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
6273
6274This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
6275STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
6276This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
6277Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
6278it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
6279
6280*** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
6281if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6282
6283*** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
6284if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6285
6286*** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
6287to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
6288not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
6289which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
6290
6291(truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
6292
6293This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
6294
6295The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
6296If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
6297are not included in the resulting value.
6298
6299The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
6300at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
6301WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
6302is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
6303
6304If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
6305place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
6306character extends across that column), then the padding character
6307PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
6308string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
6309column START-COLUMN.
6310
6311*** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
6312the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
6313necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
6314difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
6315changed text, before the change.
6316
6317*** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
6318sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
6319one character set for each script, not for each language.
6320
6321**** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
6322
6323**** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
6324
6325**** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
6326set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
6327
6328**** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
6329name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
6330which identify the character within that character set.
6331
6332**** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
6333byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
6334opposite of split-char.
6335
6336**** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
6337of all the characters between BEG and END.
6338
6339**** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
6340of all the characters in a string.
6341
6342*** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
6343and specifying coding systems.
6344
6345**** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
6346system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
6347of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
6348(Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
6349and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
6350as what to do about code conversion.)
6351
6352**** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
6353name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
6354
6355**** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6356for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6357except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
6358
6359Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6360which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
6361to match against a file name.
6362
6363VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6364a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6365decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6366to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6367systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6368specifies the coding system for encoding.
6369
6370If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6371or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6372
6373**** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
6374the coding system to use for network sockets.
6375
6376Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6377which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
6378either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
6379service names.
6380
6381VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6382a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6383decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6384to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6385systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6386specifies the coding system for encoding.
6387
6388If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6389or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6390
6391**** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6392for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6393except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
6394start the subprocess.
6395
6396**** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
6397systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
6398when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
6399(OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
6400to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
6401
6402**** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
6403coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
6404subprocess.
6405
6406It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
6407but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
6408start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
6409connection permanently or until overridden.
6410
6411The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
6412file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
6413network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
6414coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
6415It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
6416system for one operation at a time.
6417
6418**** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
6419files, subprocesses or network connections.
6420
6421**** The function process-coding-system tells you what
6422coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
6423The value is a cons cell,
6424 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
6425where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
6426the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
6427input to the subprocess.
6428
6429**** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
6430change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
6431
6432** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
6433customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
6434you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
6435
6436You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
6437variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
6438information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
6439legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
6440customization.
6441
6442Thus, instead of writing
6443
6444 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
6445 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
6446
6447you would now write this:
6448
6449 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
6450 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
6451 :type 'boolean
6452 :group foo)
6453
6454The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
6455two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
6456describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
6457for a description of them.
6458
6459The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
6460should belong to. You define a new group like this:
6461
6462 (defgroup ispell nil
6463 "Spell checking using Ispell."
6464 :group 'processes)
6465
6466The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
6467group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
6468but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
6469to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
6470second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
6471
6472Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
6473package should have just one group; a more complex package should
6474have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
6475package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
6476first-level subgroups.
6477
6478** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
6479
6480This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
6481separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
6482
6483** easy-mmode
6484
6485The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
6486developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
6487only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
6488predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
6489`easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
6490`easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
6491
6492** Text property changes
6493
6494*** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
6495text property.
6496
6497*** The new functions next-char-property-change and
6498previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
6499place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
6500functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
6501starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
6502
6503If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
6504LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
6505of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
6506position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
6507
6508*** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
6509value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
6510is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
6511
6512** Changes in invisibility features
6513
6514*** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
6515hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
6516is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
6517should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
6518would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
6519make the overlay visible.
6520
6521During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
6522invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
6523needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
6524which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
6525the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
6526t when it should hide it.
6527
6528*** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
6529
6530Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
79214ddf
FP
6531invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
6532and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
a933dad1 6533Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
79214ddf 6534manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
a933dad1
DL
6535Here is an example of how to do this:
6536
6537 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
79214ddf 6538 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
a933dad1 6539 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
79214ddf 6540 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
a933dad1
DL
6541
6542 ...
6543 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
6544
6545 ...
6546 ;; When done with the overlays:
6547 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
6548 ;; Or respectively:
6549 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
6550
6551** Changes in syntax parsing.
6552
6553*** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
6554`parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
6555obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
6556`parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
6557
6558If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
6559is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
6560used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
6561
6562When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
6563character in the buffer is calculated thus:
6564
6565 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
6566 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
6567
6568 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
6569 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
6570 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
6571
6572 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
6573 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
6574 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
6575 determine the syntax type of the character.
6576
6577 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
6578 of the current buffer.
6579
6580*** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
6581value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
6582for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
6583
6584*** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
6585and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
6586only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
6587character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
6588another character with the same code (unless quoted).
6589
6590These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
6591text property.
6592
6593*** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
6594arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
6595of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
6596
6597*** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
6598(and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
6599element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
6600nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
6601string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
6602
6603*** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
6604syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
6605`font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
6606
6607** Changes in face features
6608
6609*** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
6610if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
6611
6612*** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
6613of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
6614
6615*** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
6616set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
6617
6618*** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
6619set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
6620
6621*** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
6622by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
6623and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
6624the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
6625overlay property).
6626
6627This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
6628arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
6629
6630** Changes in file-handling functions
6631
6632*** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
6633directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
6634they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
6635is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
6636
6637This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
6638begins with ~.
6639
6640*** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
6641it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
6642
6643*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
6644the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
6645
6646*** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
6647as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
6648
6649*** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
6650character code conversion as well as other things.
6651
6652Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
6653(formerly it did not).
6654
6655*** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
6656environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
6657
6658*** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
6659instead of constant strings.
6660
6661*** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
6662to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
6663any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
6664
6665substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
6666in the same way as before.
6667
6668*** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
6669The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
6670which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
6671
6672*** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
6673error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
6674else, and returns nil.
6675
6676*** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
6677directory cannot be listed.
6678
6679** Changes in minibuffer input
6680
6681*** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
6682read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
6683additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
6684argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
6685ways:
6686
6687 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
6688 It is available through the history command M-n.
6689
6690*** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
6691read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
6692argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
6693minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
6694enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
6695
6696In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
6697argument in this way.
6698
6699*** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
6700from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
6701minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
6702
6703** Echo area features
6704
6705*** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
6706echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
6707minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
6708after the echo area is cleared.
6709
6710*** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
6711in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
6712
6713** Keyboard input features
6714
6715*** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
6716set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
6717
6718*** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
6719received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
6720by keyboard macros.
6721
6722** Frame-related changes
6723
6724*** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
6725creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
6726hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
6727
6728*** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
6729the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
6730has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
6731
6732*** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6733selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
6734value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
6735in the selected frame.
6736
6737*** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
6738is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
6739which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
6740
6741** X Windows features
6742
6743*** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
6744x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
6745x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
6746
6747*** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
6748The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
6749
6750*** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
6751MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
6752A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
6753
6754If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
6755it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
6756
6757** Subprocess features
6758
6759*** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
6760functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
6761automatically.
6762
6763*** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
6764and returns the output from the command as a string.
6765
6766*** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
6767and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
6768
6769** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
6770does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
6771
6772** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
6773at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
6774goes after the other menu items.
6775
6776** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
79214ddf 6777of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
a933dad1
DL
6778around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
6779are in use.
6780
6781The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
6782series of several changes--if that seems safe.
6783
6784Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
6785after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
6786form.
6787
6788** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
6789is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
6790but its hook is still run.
6791
6792** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6793for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6794
6795If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6796regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6797useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6798
6799This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6800are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6801filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6802warned.
6803
6804** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6805way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6806
6807** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6808integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6809functions like display-time.
6810
6811** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6812name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6813
6814** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6815can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6816is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6817
6818** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6819if there is an error in compilation.
6820
6821** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6822switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6823argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6824they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6825
6826** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6827Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6828the *scratch* buffer.
6829
6830** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6831The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6832where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6833e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6834
6835** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6836and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6837It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6838
6839** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6840using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6841variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
6842and compose-mail-other-frame.
6843
6844** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
6845can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
6846full name of the specified user will be returned.
6847
6848** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
6849of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6850where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6851in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6852option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6853files at all.
6854
6855** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6856and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6857width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6858the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6859
6860For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6861minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6862with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6863is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6864
6865** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6866
6867** imenu.el changes.
6868
6869You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
79214ddf 6870item from menu created by imenu.
a933dad1
DL
6871
6872An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6873#include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6874select one of those items.
6875\f
6876* Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6877\f
6878* Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6879
6880** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6881mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6882
6883** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6884use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6885Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6886\f
6887* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6888
6889** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6890To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6891
6892** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6893conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6894matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6895expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6896word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6897all caps.
6898
6899** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6900at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6901
6902When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6903does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6904as in previous Emacs versions.
6905
6906** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6907non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6908time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6909frames.
6910
6911** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6912if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6913This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6914Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6915accident.
6916
6917** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6918keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6919It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6920line and then executing the macro.
6921
6922This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6923
6924** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6925(something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6926characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6927characters.
6928
6929** Font Lock mode
6930
6931*** Font Lock support modes
6932
6933Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6934below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6935hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6936to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6937Font Lock mode is enabled.
6938
6939For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6940
6941 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6942
6943in your ~/.emacs.
6944
6945*** lazy-lock
6946
6947The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6948only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6949becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6950Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6951occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6952buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6953Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6954
6955To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6956
6957 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6958
6959To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6960
6961** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6962
6963*** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6964paren and key.
6965
6966*** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6967supported.
6968
6969** Gnus changes.
6970
6971Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6972commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6973significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6974previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6975
6976Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6977between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6978
79214ddf 6979*** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
a933dad1
DL
6980variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6981obsolete.
6982
6983*** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6984missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6985
6986 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6987
6988*** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6989
6990 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6991
6992*** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
79214ddf 6993referred.
a933dad1
DL
6994
6995*** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6996
6997 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6998
6999*** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7000
7001 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7002
7003*** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
79214ddf 7004buffers.
a933dad1
DL
7005
7006 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7007
7008*** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7009
7010 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7011
7012*** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7013
7014 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7015
7016*** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7017
7018 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7019
7020*** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7021is possible.
7022
7023 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7024
7025*** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7026groups of groups.
7027
7028*** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7029
7030*** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
79214ddf 7031batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
a933dad1
DL
7032
7033*** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7034
7035*** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7036
7037*** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7038
7039 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7040
7041*** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7042expiration times.
7043
7044*** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7045
7046*** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7047process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7048
7049*** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7050articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7051bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7052
7053*** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7054articles with the `*' command.
7055
7056*** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7057
7058*** Article headers can be buttonized.
7059
7060 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7061
7062*** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7063
79214ddf 7064*** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
a933dad1
DL
7065`nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7066
7067*** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
79214ddf 7068buffer.
a933dad1
DL
7069
7070*** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7071
7072*** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7073
7074*** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7075
7076 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7077
79214ddf 7078*** Groups can be made permanently visible.
a933dad1
DL
7079
7080 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7081
79214ddf 7082*** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
a933dad1
DL
7083
7084*** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7085
79214ddf 7086*** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
a933dad1 7087
79214ddf 7088 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
a933dad1
DL
7089 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7090
7091*** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
79214ddf 7092refetching.
a933dad1
DL
7093
7094 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7095
7096*** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7097buffer to allow easier treatment.
7098
7099*** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7100
7101*** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7102
7103 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7104
7105*** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
79214ddf 7106articles.
a933dad1
DL
7107
7108 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7109
79214ddf 7110*** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
a933dad1
DL
7111
7112*** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7113cited text to hide is now customizable.
7114
7115 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7116
7117*** Boring headers can be hidden.
7118
7119 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7120
7121*** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7122
7123*** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7124
7125The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7126in greater detail.
7127\f
7128* Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7129
7130** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7131second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7132asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7133exists.
7134
7135** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7136as well as lists.
7137
7138** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7139of a given keymap.
7140
7141** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7142given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7143keymap or nil.
7144
7145** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7146an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7147name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7148menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7149equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7150alias.
7151\f
7152* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7153
7154** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7155
7156Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7157This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7158was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7159far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7160pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7161
7162For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7163you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7164`http://www.vtw.org/'.
7165
7166** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7167
7168The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7169do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7170It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7171much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7172chapter of the manual for details.
7173
7174However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7175customization variables take effect.
7176
7177** Marking with the mouse.
7178
7179When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7180highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7181using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7182
7183** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7184
7185*** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7186
7187*** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7188to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7189
7190*** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7191in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7192you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7193application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7194applications, these problems are significant.
7195
7196If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7197likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7198However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7199will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7200other DOS application as a subprocess.
7201
7202Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7203You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7204
7205If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7206subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7207have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7208Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7209separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7210Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7211
7212** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7213
7214This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7215which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7216minibuffer contains.
7217
7218** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7219
7220The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7221It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7222It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7223affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7224
7225The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7226it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7227and also serves as the default for the displayed title
7228when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
7229
7230** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
7231enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
7232
7233** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
7234F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
7235Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
7236
7237If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
7238menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
7239something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
7240the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
7241
7242 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
7243
7244** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
7245to replace the characters it "deletes".
7246
7247** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
7248
7249** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
7250a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
7251select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
7252It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
7253immediately after the selected one.
7254
7255This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
7256made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
7257
7258** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
7259
7260Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
7261directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
7262If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
7263Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
7264recover-session.
7265
7266You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
7267auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
7268will not work.
7269
7270Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
7271normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
7272this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
7273bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
7274now that the bug is fixed.
7275
7276** Changes to Version Control (VC)
7277
7278There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
7279when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
7280Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
7281which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
7282
7283If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
7284telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
7285VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
7286the link is visited and a warning displayed.
7287
7288** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
7289Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
7290is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
7291
7292There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
7293Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
7294enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
7295The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
7296remain normal.
7297
7298** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
7299header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
7300
7301Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
7302known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
7303offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
7304Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
7305
7306Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
7307of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
7308a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
7309name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
7310documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
7311`mail-directory-stream'.)
7312
7313** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
7314skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
7315characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
7316with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
7317
7318Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
7319- to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
7320wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
7321
7322The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
7323less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
7324headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
7325Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
7326Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
7327fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
7328to a limitation in font-lock).
7329
7330External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
7331
7332** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
7333buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
7334buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
7335this example:
7336
7337 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
7338 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
7339
7340** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7341
7342*** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
7343
7344*** Font Lock mode is now supported.
7345
7346*** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
7347
7348*** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
7349entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
7350will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
7351isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
7352(bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
7353The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
7354
7355*** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
7356does the same job.
7357
7358*** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
7359"Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
7360
7361*** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
7362text.
7363
7364** Font Lock mode
7365
7366*** Global Font Lock mode
7367
7368Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
7369new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
7370font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
7371turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
7372on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
7373
7374For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
7375
7376 (global-font-lock-mode t)
7377
7378in your ~/.emacs.
7379
7380*** Local Refontification
7381
7382In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
7383However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
7384those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
7385command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
7386
7387In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
7388(The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
7389current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
7390above and below point.
7391
7392With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
7393
7394** Follow mode
7395
7396Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
7397buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
7398side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
7399they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
7400split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
7401follow-mode.
7402
7403M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
7404
7405To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
7406command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
7407
7408** hide-show changes.
7409
7410The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
7411to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
7412normal hooks.
7413
7414** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
7415The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
7416
7417** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
7418recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
7419those that begin a function, record, or macro.
7420
7421** MSDOS Changes
7422
7423*** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
7424Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
7425
7426*** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
7427and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
7428
7429*** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
7430
7431*** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
7432pressing both mouse buttons.
7433
7434*** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
7435restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
79214ddf 7436are:
a933dad1
DL
7437
7438**** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
7439now works.
7440
7441**** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
7442
7443**** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
7444implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
7445
7446**** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
7447
7448**** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
7449
7450**** `M-x recover-session' works.
7451
7452**** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
7453
7454**** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
7455\f
7456* Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
7457
7458** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
7459tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
7460remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
7461this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
7462behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
7463
7464** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
7465
7466The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
7467not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
7468need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
7469be different.
7470
7471It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
7472than `system-type'.
7473
7474See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
7475
7476** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
7477now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
7478
7479** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
7480that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
7481
7482** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
7483no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
7484reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
7485
7486The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
7487to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
7488like this:
7489
7490 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7491
7492SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
7493It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
7494becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
7495
7496REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
7497seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
7498means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
7499
7500*** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
7501up if too much time passes.
7502
7503 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
7504
7505This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
7506If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
7507of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
7508form in BODY.
7509
7510*** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
7511a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
7512call looks like this:
7513
7514 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7515
7516SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
7517runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
7518timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
7519ARGS.
7520
7521Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
7522command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
7523command.
7524
7525REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
7526time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
7527does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
7528each time Emacs becomes idle.
7529
7530If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
7531idle for SECS seconds.
7532
7533*** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
7534all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
7535programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
7536instead.
7537
7538*** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
7539there is no answer within a certain time.
7540
7541 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
7542
7543asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
7544within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
7545Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
7546
7547** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
7548arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
7549meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
7550arguments in between are ignored.
7551
7552This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
7553the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
7554
7555** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
7556/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
7557/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
7558site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
7559version.
7560
7561It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
7562version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
7563for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
7564has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
7565and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
7566problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
7567
7568** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
7569.abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
7570systems with limited file name syntax.
7571
7572Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
7573convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
7574for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
7575completions.el:
7576
7577(defvar save-completions-file-name
7578 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
7579 "*The filename to save completions to.")
7580
7581This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
7582depends on the operating system, because the definition of
7583convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
7584Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
7585MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
7586
7587** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
7588rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
7589minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
7590
7591** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
7592marker from its buffer position.
7593
7594** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
7595Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
7596The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
7597
7598** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
7599that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
7600condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
7601of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
7602matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
7603regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
7604
7605This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
7606errors that happen often during editing.
7607
7608** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
7609into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
7610puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
7611
7612** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
7613now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
7614
7615** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
7616a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
7617name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
7618to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
7619and not get-buffer-window.
7620
7621** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
7622calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
7623being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
7624
7625If you use this feature, you should set the variable
7626buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
7627property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
7628non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
7629are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
7630property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
7631over and over for the same text.
7632
7633** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
7634
7635*** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
7636in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
7637
7638;; @(#) HEADER: text
7639;; $HEADER: text $
7640
7641in addition to the normal
7642
7643;; HEADER: text
7644
7645*** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
7646checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
7647lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
7648\f
7649* For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7650
7651----------------------------------------------------------------------
7652Copyright information:
7653
404fa7d6 7654Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
a933dad1
DL
7655
7656 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7657 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7658 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7659 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7660
7661 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7662 of this document, or of portions of it,
7663 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7664 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7665\f
7666Local variables:
7667mode: outline
7668paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
7669end: