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1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999
2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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
11** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
13\f
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14* Changes in Emacs 21.1
15
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16** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
17under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
18.emacs file.
19
20The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
21determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
22
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23** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
24abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
25`directory-abbrev-alist'.
26
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27** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
28is running in batch mode. For example,
29
30 (message "%s" (read t))
31
32will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
33to standard output.
34
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35** Faces and frame parameters.
36
37There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
38Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
39`scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
40`scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
41sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
42for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
43parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
44
45Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
46`default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
79214ddf 47`foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
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48`default' face and vice versa.
49
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50** New face `menu'.
51
52The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
53Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
54attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
55
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56** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
57
58The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
59colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
60correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
61the screen gamma of a frame's display.
62
63PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
64in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
65color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
66
67The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
68`ScreenGamma'.
69
70** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
71
72The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
73Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
74oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
75of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
76the text.
77
78** Emacs has a new face implementation.
79
80The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
81font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
82height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
83These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
84specify a font.
85
86Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
87These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
88under Lisp changes, below.
89
90** New default font is Courier 12pt.
91
92** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
93its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
94it is hollow.
95
96** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
97truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
98foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
99customizing face `fringe'.
100
101** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
102can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
103
104** LessTif support.
105
106Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
107need a version 0.88.1 or later.
108
109** Toolkit scroll bars.
110
111Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
112LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
113configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
114bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
115bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
116Emacs.
117
118When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
119Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
120Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
121Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
122define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
123`s/freebsd.h' as an example.
124
125Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
126a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
127directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
128different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
129system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
130add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
131
132The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
133`float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
134This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
135image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
136Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
137
138** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
139
140When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
141widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
142Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
143
144** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
145
146When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
147whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
148defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
149highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
150displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
151whitespace.
152
153** Busy-cursor.
154
155Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
156display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
157
158** Blinking cursor
159
160M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
161terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
162and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
163the group `cursor'.
164
165** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
166
167This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
168generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
169See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
170details.
171
172Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
173have to do anything to activate it.
174
175** Tabs and variable-width text.
176
177Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
178defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
179independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
180Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
181
182** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
183
184*** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
185
186 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
187
188The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
189one.
190
191*** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
192Motif.
193
194** Hscrolling in C code.
195
196Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
197
198** Tool bar support.
199
200Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
201how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
202
203** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
204
205Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
206mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
207line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
208about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
209in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
210
211Currently, the following actions have been defined:
212
213- Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
214buffers.
215
216- Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
217M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
218
219- Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
220
221- Mouse-1 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
222toggles the read-only status.
223
224- Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
225
226** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
227
228When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
e33b0397 229from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
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230non-nil.
231
232** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
233
234Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
235Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
236the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
237italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
238Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
239attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
240
241** Sound support
242
243Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
244(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
245Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
246(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
247to enable sound support.
248
249** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
250the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
251forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
252value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
253users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
254even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
255
256The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
257
258** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
259
260As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
261drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
262`x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
263
264** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
265bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
266
267This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
268`indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
269variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
270
271** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
272
273When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
274value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
275number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
276fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
277
278When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
279value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
280number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
281fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
282
283** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
284notably at the end of lines.
285
286All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
287spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
288
289** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
290query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
291after each match to get the replacement text.
292
293** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
294
295If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
296longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
297on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
298by setting the following variable:
299
300- User option: max-mini-window-height
301
302Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
303fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
304specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
305
306Default is 0.25.
307
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308** Comint (subshell) changes
309
310Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
311and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
312
313The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
314buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
315buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
316
317The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
318M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
319the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
320
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321** Changes to Rmail mode
322
323RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg, like
324`j'.
325
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326** Changes to TeX mode
327
328The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
329`latex-mode'.
330
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331** Changes to RefTeX mode
332
333*** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
334 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
335 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
336 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
337 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
338 can be edited from that buffer.
339
340*** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
341 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
342 `A' to use all marked entries).
343
344*** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
345 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
346
347*** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
348 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
349 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
350 been cited.
351
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352** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
353The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
354semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
355in column 1 are always made leaves.
356
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357** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
358has the following new features:
359
360*** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
361may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
362to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
363time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
364
365*** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
366feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
367file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
368compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
369pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
370defaults to 1.
371
372** Tooltips.
373
374Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
375mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
376can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
377
378Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
379variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
380the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
381tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
382
383** Customize changes
384
385*** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
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386`State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
387cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
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388
389*** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
390Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
391default).
392
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393*** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
394between custom options. Example:
395
396 (defcustom default-input-method nil
397 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
398 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
399 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
400 :group 'mule
401 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
402 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
403
404This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
405current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
406first in a custom-set-variables statement.
407
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408** New features in evaluation commands
409
410The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
411modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
412print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
413customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
414eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
415
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416** Dired changes
417
418*** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
419command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
420is, delete only empty directories.
421
422*** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
423command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
424copy directories recursively.
425
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426*** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
427in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
428the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
429
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430** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
431use the -f option when sending mail.
432
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433** CC mode changes.
434
435Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
436current user setups (although it's believed that these
437incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
438However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
439back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
440compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
441release.
442
443*** New initialization procedure for the style system.
444When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
445variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
446take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
447is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
448settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
449possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
450Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
451
452By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
453special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
454the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
455of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
456above.
457
458Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
459when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
460function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
461call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
462then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
463values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
464only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
465function documentation for more info.
466
467The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
468especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
469with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
470intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
471such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
472is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
473configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
474global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
475
476(Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
477
478**** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
479This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
480
481This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
482variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
483completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
484the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
485empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
486style system.
487
488**** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
489In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
490c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
491as far as possible.
492
493*** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
494CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
495surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
496chapter about this in the manual.
497
498**** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
499The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
500recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
501primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
502adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
503
504**** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
505This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
506c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
507
508**** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
509This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
510
511It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
512Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
513A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
514inside CC Mode.
515
516Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
517causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
518the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
519available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
520cc-mode/).
521
522**** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
523The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
524specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
525literals.
526
527**** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
528It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
529prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
530you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
531this function.
532
533*** Fixes to IDL mode.
534It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
535to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
536struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
537Thanks to Eric Eide.
538
539*** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
540It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
541opening braces hangs and when they don't.
542
543**** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
544
545*** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
546See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
547better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
548and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
549
550*** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
551previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
552the column specified by comment-column.
553
554*** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
555In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
556is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
557prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
558contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
559don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
560
561*** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
562instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
563arguments.
564
565*** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
566
567*** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
568c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
569c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
570variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
571Provan).
572
573*** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
574
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575** Isearch changes
576
577*** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
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578selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
579
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580*** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
581
d35fce81 582Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
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583`isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
584search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
585before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
586highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
587`secondary-selection'.
588
589The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
590will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
591Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
592using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
593usual snappy response.
594
595If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
596matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
597set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
598isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
599
600
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601** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
602names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
603sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
604
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605** Shell script mode changes.
606
607Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
608derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
609sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
610
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611** Etags changes.
612
613*** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
614
aca0be23 615*** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
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616possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
617{lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
618This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
619a regular expression. The manual contains details.
aca0be23 620
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621*** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
622declarations when given the --declarations option.
623
624*** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
aca0be23 625"operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
79214ddf
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626
627*** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
628types.
629
630*** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
631
632*** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
633
634*** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
635are now tagged.
636
637*** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
638variables are tagged.
639
640*** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
641
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642*** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
643for PSWrap.
79214ddf 644
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645** Changes in etags.el
646
647*** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
648the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
649
650If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
651FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
652TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
653obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
654
655TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
656
657FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
658List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
659
660A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
661
662 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
663 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
664 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
665
666*** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
667of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
668
669*** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
670names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
671
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672** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
673and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
674LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
675
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676** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
677These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
678(Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
679currently no specific input method support for them.
680
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681** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sqeuence-nos' to
682remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
683appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
684
685** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
686
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687** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
688
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689** New modes and packages
690
691*** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
692
693*** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
694
695*** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
696
697*** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
698Pascal) language.
699
700*** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
701the text at point.
702
703*** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
704
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705*** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
706
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707*** whitespace.el ???
708
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709*** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
710files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
711(very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
712interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
713often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
714uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
715codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
716
717*** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
718
719Here is an example of columns:
720
721horse apple bus
722dog pineapple car EXTRA
723porcupine strawberry airplane
724
725Doing the following settings:
726
727 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
728 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
729 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
730 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
731
732
733Selecting the lines above and typing:
734
735 M-x delimit-columns-region
736
737It results:
738
739[ horse , apple , bus , ]
740[ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
741[ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
742
743delim-col has the following options:
744
745 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
746 before all columns.
747
748 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
749 between each column.
750
751 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
752 after all columns.
753
754 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
755 each column.
756
757delim-col has the following commands:
758
759 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
760 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
761
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762*** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
763were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
764is displayed in the "Files" menu.
765
766The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
767
768To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
769
770To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
771M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
772
773To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
774M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
775
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776*** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
777text.
778
36e24b82 779*** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
91735437
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780of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
781specific to Message mode.
782
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783*** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
784viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
785with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
786
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787** Withdrawn packages
788
789*** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
790functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
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791
792*** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el.
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793\f
794* Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
795
796Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
797--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
798When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
799so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
800
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801** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
802In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
803and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
804
9e207b90
GM
805** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
806with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
807specified table.
808
809 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
810
811Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
03d9c64c
GM
812TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
813saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
814what BODY returns.
9e207b90 815
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816** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
817removed since it wasn't used by anything.
818
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819** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
820instead of being optional.
821
d20679eb
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822** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
823modify read-only text.
824
fbc164de
PE
825** New functions and variables for locales.
826
827The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
828decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
b718982a
PE
829time functions like strftime. The new variables
830`system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
831locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
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832
833The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
834environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
835the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
b718982a
PE
836environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
837not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
838`locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
839`locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
fbc164de 840
863476d1
SM
841** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
842To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
843modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
844start sequences.
845
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GM
846** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
847because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
848
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849** New function `propertize'
850
851The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
852strings with text properties.
853
854- Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
855
856Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
857by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
858PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
859specified value of that property. Example:
860
861 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
862
863+++
864** push and pop macros.
865
866A simple version of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
867is now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
868as the place that holds the list to be changed.
869
870(push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
871(pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
872 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
873
874+++
875** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
876as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
877
878[:digit:] matches 0 through 9
879[:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
880[:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
881[:blank:] matches space and tab only
882[:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
883 space, and DEL.
884[:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
885 and DEL.
886[:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
887 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
888 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
889[:alpha:] matches letters.
890 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
891 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
892[:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
893[:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
894[:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
895[:punct:] matches punctuation.
896 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
897 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
898[:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
899[:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
900[:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
901
902+++
903** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
904
905The following functions are defined for hash tables:
906
907- Function: make-hash-table ARGS
908
909The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
910are optional. The following arguments are defined:
911
912:test TEST
913
914TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
915Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
916it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
917
918:size SIZE
919
920SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
921many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
922
923:rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
924
925REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
926full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
927size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
9281.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
929old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
930
931:rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
932
933THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
934hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
935(size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
936
937:weakness WEAK
938
939WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
940Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
941their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
942hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
943
944- Function: makehash &optional TEST
945
946Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
947
948- Function: hash-table-p TABLE
949
950Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
951
952- Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
953
954Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
955values are shared.
956
957- Function: hash-table-count TABLE
958
959Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
960
961- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
962
963Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
964
965- Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
966
967Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
968
969- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
970
971Returns the size of TABLE.
972
973- Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
974
975Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
976
977- Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
978
979Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
980
981- Function: clrhash TABLE
982
983Clear TABLE.
984
985- Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
986
987Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
988not found.
989
79214ddf 990- Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
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DL
991
992Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
993another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
994
995- Function: remhash KEY TABLE
996
997Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
998
999- Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1000
1001Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1002arguments KEY and VALUE.
1003
1004- Function: sxhash OBJ
1005
1006Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1007
1008- Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1009
1010Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1011a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
79214ddf 1012comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
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1013and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1014of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1015
1016TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1017
1018HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1019code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1020integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1021
1022Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1023be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1024
1025 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1026 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1027
1028 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1029 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1030
79214ddf 1031 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
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DL
1032 'case-fold-string-hash))
1033
1034 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1035
1036+++
1037** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1038
1039It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1040circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1041a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1042
1043+++
1044** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1045
1046If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1047#N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1048
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DL
1049+++
1050** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
1051t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
1052specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
1053is too short to reach that column.
1054
1055+++
1056** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
1057now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
1058after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
1059two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
1060
1061If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
1062perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
1063and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
1064
1065+++
1066** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
1067to specify which buffer to return the size of.
1068
1069+++
1070** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
1071calendar-move-hook after moving point.
1072
1073+++
1074** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
1075directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
1076small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
1077small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
1078temporary-file-directory instead.
1079
1080+++
1081** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
1082the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
1083`before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
1084hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
1085
1086+++
1087** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
1088elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
1089
1090+++
1091** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
1092
1093make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
1094creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
1095ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
1096
1097+++
1098** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
1099
1100The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
1101on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
1102is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
1103never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
1104ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
1105overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
1106
1107If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
1108that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
1109to get an error if the file exists at that time.
1110The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
1111
1112+++
1113** Function `format' now handles text properties.
1114
1115Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
1116If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
1117ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
1118result string.
1119
1120Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
1121string where arguments appear in the result string.
1122
1123Example:
1124
1125 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
1126 (s2 "world"))
1127 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
1128 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
b246b1f6 1129 (format s1 s2))
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1130
1131results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
1132
1133+++
1134** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
1135
1136Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
1137The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
1138argument in it.
1139
1140 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
1141 (arg "world"))
1142 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
1143 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
1144 (message msg arg))
1145
1146+++
1147** Sound support
1148
1149Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
1150(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
1151
1152Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
1153(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
1154to enable sound support.
1155
1156Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
1157list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
1158when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
1159functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
1160sound to play, before playing the sound.
1161
1162The following sound properties are supported:
1163
1164- `:file FILE'
1165
1166FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
1167searched relative to `data-directory'.
1168
1169- `:volume VOLUME'
1170
1171VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
11720..1. This property is optional.
1173
1174Other properties are ignored.
1175
1176** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
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1177
1178** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
1179a keyword symbol.
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1180\f
1181* New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
1182
1183Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1184--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1185When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1186so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1187
1188** New face implementation.
1189
1190Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
1191font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
1192
1193+++
1194*** New faces.
1195
1196Each face can specify the following display attributes:
1197
1198 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
79214ddf 1199
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1200 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
1201 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
79214ddf 1202
a933dad1 1203 3. Font height in 1/10pt
79214ddf 1204
a933dad1 1205 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
79214ddf 1206
a933dad1 1207 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
79214ddf 1208
a933dad1 1209 6. Foreground color.
79214ddf 1210
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1211 7. Background color.
1212
1213 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
1214
1215 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
1216
1217 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
1218
1219 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
1220
1221 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
1222 color.
1223
1224 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
1225 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
1226
1227Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
1228same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
1229frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
1230faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
1231with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
1232attributes mentioned above.
1233
1234There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
1235definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
1236created frames.
79214ddf 1237
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1238A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
1239have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
1240`fully-specified'.
1241
1242+++
1243*** Face merging.
1244
1245The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
1246combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
1247aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
1248properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
1249that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
1250results in a fully-specified face.
1251
1252+++
1253*** Face realization.
1254
1255After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
1256merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
1257realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
1258available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
1259face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
1260cache of the frame on which it was realized.
1261
1262Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
1263character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
1264for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
1265charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
1266
1267Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
1268specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
1269being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
1270the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
1271statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
1272
1273In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
1274`char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
12750x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
1276the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
1277initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
1278Emacs.
1279
1280Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
1281`enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
1282registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
1283with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
1284
1285++++
1286**** Clearing face caches.
1287
1288The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
1289on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
1290unused fonts.
1291
1292+++
1293*** Font selection.
79214ddf 1294
a933dad1
DL
1295Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
1296given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
1297for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
1298
1299If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1300pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1301family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1302property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1303an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1304
1305Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1306against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1307match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1308
1309Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1310
1311The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1312attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1313face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1314names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1315that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1316width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1317to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1318
1319Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1320specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1321face doesn't exist.
1322
1323+++
1324**** Scalable fonts
1325
1326Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1327since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1328servers.
1329
1330To enable scalable font use, set the variable
b246b1f6 1331`scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
a933dad1
DL
1332scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1333Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1334scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1335that list. Example:
1336
1337 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1338
1339allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1340
1341+++
1342*** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1343
1344- Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1345
1346Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1347is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1348string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1349
1350If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1351the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1352FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1353POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1354SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1355These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1356if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1357REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1358the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1359of the face font sort order.
1360
79214ddf 1361- Function: x-font-family-list
a933dad1
DL
1362
1363Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1364omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1365(FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1366non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1367
1368- Variable: font-list-limit
1369
1370Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1371won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1372matching font. The default is currently 100.
1373
1374+++
1375*** Setting face attributes.
1376
1377For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1378with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1379implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1380`face-attribute'.
1381
1382Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1383symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1384
1385The following attributes are recognized:
1386
1387`:family'
1388
1389VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1390or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1391and `?' are allowed.
1392
1393`:width'
1394
1395VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1396It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1397`condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1398`extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1399
1400`:height'
1401
1402VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
14031/10 pt.
1404
1405`:weight'
1406
1407VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1408symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1409`semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1410
1411`:slant'
1412
1413VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1414symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1415`reverse-oblique'.
1416
1417`:foreground', `:background'
1418
1419VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1420
1421`:underline'
1422
1423VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1424VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1425a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1426don't underline.
1427
1428`:overline'
1429
1430VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1431VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1432string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1433overline.
1434
1435`:strike-through'
1436
1437VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1438striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1439face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1440is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1441
1442`:box'
1443
1444VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1445around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1446VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1447of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1448and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1449VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1450:color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1451the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1452specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1453defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1454the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1455color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1456should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1457like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1458that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1459the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1460box.
1461
1462`:inverse-video'
1463
1464VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1465inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1466
1467`:stipple'
1468
1469If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1470The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1471searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1472HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1473is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1474explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1475
1476For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1477and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1478
1479`:font'
1480
1481Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1482XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1483is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1484versions of Emacs.
1485
1486For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1487be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1488must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1489
1490Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1491`defface'.
1492
1493*** Face attributes and X resources
1494
1495The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1496from X resources:
1497
1498 Face attribute X resource class
1499-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1500 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1501 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1502 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1503 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1504 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1505 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1506 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1507 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1508 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1509 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1510 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1511 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1512 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
79214ddf 1513 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
a933dad1
DL
1514 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1515 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1516 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1517 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1518 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1519
1520+++
1521*** Text property `face'.
1522
1523The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1524specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1525specification can be
1526
15271. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1528
15292. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1530 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1531 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1532 for face attribute names.
1533
15343. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1535 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1536 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1537
1538+++
1539** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1540
1541The function `face-register-tty-color' can be used to define colors
1542for use on TTY frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the
1543terminal. Emacs defines a couple of default color mappings by
1544default. You can get defined colors with a call to
1545`tty-defined-colors'. The function `face-clear-tty-colors' can be
1546used to clear the mapping table.
1547
1548+++
1549** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
a933dad1 1550
463cac2d 1551This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
a933dad1
DL
1552
1553The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1554end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1555Otherwise, it returns zero.
1556
463cac2d
GM
1557** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
1558
1559There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
1560buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
1561text-property.
1562
9a9dfda8 1563Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
463cac2d 1564forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
9a9dfda8 1565to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
463cac2d 1566not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
9a9dfda8 1567commands continue into the next field if repeated.
463cac2d
GM
1568
1569Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
9a9dfda8 1570a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
463cac2d 1571editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
a933dad1 1572
9a9dfda8
GM
1573The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
1574
1575- Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
1576
1577Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
1578A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1579If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
1580constrained position if that is is different.
1581
1582If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
1583positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
1584ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
1585constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
1586as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1587is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
1588fields.
1589
1590If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
1591NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
1592unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
1593C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
1594only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
1595
1596- Function: erase-field &optional POS
1597
1598Erases the field surrounding POS.
1599A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1600If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1601
1602- Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1603
1604Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
1605A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1606If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1607If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
1608field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
1609
1610- Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1611
1612Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
1613A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1614If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1615If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
1616then the end of the *following* field is returned.
1617
1618- Function: field-string &optional POS
1619
1620Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
1621A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1622If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1623
1624- Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
1625
1626Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
1627A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1628If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1629
a933dad1
DL
1630+++
1631** Image support.
1632
1633Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
1634strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
1635(AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
1636replaces the display of the characters having that property.
1637
1638If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
1639`(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
1640AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
1641window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
1642area.
1643
1644IMAGE is an image specification.
1645
1646*** Image specifications
1647
1648Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
1649is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
1650specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
35a5514b
GM
1651symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
1652described below are ignored.
a933dad1
DL
1653
1654The following is a list of properties all image types share.
1655
1656`:ascent ASCENT'
1657
1658ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
1659of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
1660
1661`:margin MARGIN'
1662
79214ddf 1663MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
a933dad1
DL
1664margin around the image. Default is 0.
1665
1666`:relief RELIEF'
1667
1668RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
1669around an image.
1670
1671`:algorithm ALGO'
1672
1673Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
1674be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
1675supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
1676which is intended to display images "disabled."
1677
1678`:heuristic-mask BG'
1679
1680If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
1681background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
1682determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
1683corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
1684the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
1685be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
1686background of the image.
1687
1688`:file FILE'
1689
1690Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
1691search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
1692building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
1693may be present in the image specification.
1694
a933dad1
DL
1695*** Supported image types
1696
b246b1f6 1697**** XBM, image type `xbm'.
a933dad1
DL
1698
1699XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
1700properties supported are
1701
1702`:foreground FG'
1703
1704FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
1705is the frame's foreground.
1706
1707`:background FG'
1708
1709BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
1710the frame's background color.
1711
1712XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
1713case, the image specification must contain the following properties
1714instead of a `:file' property.
1715
1716`:width WIDTH'
1717
1718WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
1719
1720`:height HEIGHT'
1721
1722HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
1723
1724`:data DATA'
1725
1726DATA must be either
1727
1728 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
1729 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
1730
1731 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
1732
1733 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
1734 bitmap.
1735
1736**** XPM, image type `xpm'
1737
1738XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
1739`xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
1740found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
1741`--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
1742
1743Additional image properties supported are:
1744
1745`:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
1746
1747SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
1748name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
1749name.
1750
1751XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
1752add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
1753
1754`:data DATA'
1755
79214ddf 1756DATA must be a string containing an XPM image. The contents of the
a933dad1
DL
1757string are of the same format as that of XPM files.
1758
1759The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
1760to display compressed images.
1761
1762**** PBM, image type `pbm'
1763
1764PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
1765mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
1766defined.
1767
1768**** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
1769
1770Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
1771package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1772properties defined.
1773
1774**** TIFF, image type `tiff'
1775
1776Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
1777package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1778properties defined.
1779
1780**** GIF, image type `gif'
1781
1782Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
1783`libungif-4.1.0', or later.
1784
1785Additional image properties supported are:
1786
1787`:index INDEX'
1788
1789INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
1790multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
1791
1792This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
1793For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
1794at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
1795every 0.1 seconds.
1796
1797(defun show-anim (file max)
1798 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
1799 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
1800
1801(defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
1802 (when (= idx max)
1803 (setq idx 0))
1804 (let ((img (create-image file nil :index idx)))
1805 (save-excursion
1806 (set-buffer buffer)
1807 (goto-char (point-min))
1808 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
1809 (insert-image img "x"))
1810 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
1811
1812**** PNG, image type `png'
1813
1814Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
1815package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1816properties defined.
1817
1818**** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
1819
1820Additional image properties supported are:
1821
1822`:pt-width WIDTH'
1823
1824WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
b246b1f6 1825integer. This is a required property.
a933dad1
DL
1826
1827`:pt-height HEIGHT'
1828
1829HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
b246b1f6 1830must be a integer. This is an required property.
a933dad1
DL
1831
1832`:bounding-box BOX'
1833
1834BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
1835the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
1836files. This is an required property.
1837
1838Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
1839lisp/gs.el.
1840
1841*** Lisp interface.
1842
79214ddf
FP
1843The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
1844which are supported in the current configuration.
a933dad1
DL
1845
1846Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
1847they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
1848The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
1849manually.
1850
1851*** Simplified image API, image.el
1852
1853The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
1854creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
1855can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
1856define an image based on available image types. The functions
1857`put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
1858buffer.
1859
1860+++
1861** Display margins.
1862
1863Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
1864and images.
1865
1866To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
1867`left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
1868`set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
1869obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
1870`right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
1871the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
1872of the display margins.
1873
1874You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
1875containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
1876one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
1877string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
1878in this file).
1879
1880+++
1881** Help display
1882
1883Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
1884moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
1885`help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
1886that have a `help-echo' property.
1887
1888The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
1889items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
1890If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
1891evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
1892tool-bar item is used.
1893
1894The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
1895help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
1896help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
1897
1898+++
1899** Vertical fractional scrolling.
1900
1901The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
1902This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
1903
1904The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
1905scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
1906The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
1907scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
1908used.
1909
79214ddf
FP
1910 (global-set-key [A-down]
1911 #'(lambda ()
a933dad1 1912 (interactive)
79214ddf 1913 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1 1914 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
79214ddf 1915 (global-set-key [A-up]
a933dad1
DL
1916 #'(lambda ()
1917 (interactive)
79214ddf 1918 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1
DL
1919 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
1920
1921+++
1922** New hook `fontification-functions'.
1923
1924Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
1925when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
1926variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
1927is called with one argument, POS.
1928
1929At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
1930characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
1931as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
1932property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
1933`fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
1934
1935+++
1936** Tool bar support.
1937
1938Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
1939parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
1940controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
1941suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
1942`auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
1943automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
1944
1945*** Tool bar item definitions
1946
1947Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
1948`tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
1949where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
79214ddf 1950
a933dad1
DL
1951CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
1952evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
1953the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
1954property (see below).
79214ddf 1955
a933dad1
DL
1956BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
1957binding are currently ignored.
1958
1959The following properties are recognized:
1960
1961`:enable FORM'.
79214ddf 1962
a933dad1
DL
1963FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
1964or disabled.
79214ddf 1965
a933dad1 1966`:visible FORM'
79214ddf 1967
a933dad1 1968FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
79214ddf 1969
a933dad1
DL
1970`:filter FUNCTION'
1971
1972FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
1973FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
1974used instead of BINDING to display this item.
79214ddf 1975
a933dad1
DL
1976`:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
1977
1978TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
1979and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
79214ddf 1980
a933dad1
DL
1981`:image IMAGES'
1982
1983IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
1984image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
1985meaning of each of the four elements:
1986
1987 Index Use when item is
1988 ----------------------------------------
1989 0 enabled and selected
1990 1 enabled and deselected
1991 2 disabled and selected
1992 3 disabled and deselected
79214ddf 1993
a933dad1 1994`:help HELP-STRING'.
79214ddf 1995
a933dad1
DL
1996Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
1997is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
1998
1999*** Tool-bar-related variables.
2000
2001If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
2002resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
2003than 1/4 of the frame's size.
2004
79214ddf 2005If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
a933dad1
DL
2006raised when the mouse moves over them.
2007
2008You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
2009`tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
2010pixels. Default is 1.
2011
2012You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
2013`tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
2014
2015*** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
2016
2017You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
79214ddf 2018a tool bar item. If
a933dad1
DL
2019
2020 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
2021 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
2022 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
2023
2024is the original tool bar item definition, then
2025
2026 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
2027
2028makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
2029item.
2030
2031** Mode line changes.
2032
2033+++
2034*** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
2035
2036The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
2037that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
2038a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
2039
20401. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
2041a `local-map' text property.
2042
20432. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
2044that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
2045
20463. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
2047is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
2048`local-map' property.
2049
2050The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
2051properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
2052example.
2053
54522c9f
GM
2054*** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
2055evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
2056
a933dad1
DL
2057+++
2058*** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
2059variable mode-line-format to nil.
2060
2061+++
2062*** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
2063
2064This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
2065`header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
2066completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
2067`default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
2068line.
2069
2070The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
2071`header-line'.
2072
2073The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
2074position in the header-line.
2075
2076+++
2077** Text property `display'
2078
2079The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
2080also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
2081`display' property should be a display specification, as described
2082below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
2083
2084*** Variable width and height spaces
2085
2086To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
2087specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
2088`(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
2089area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
2090marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
2091displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
2092simpler form STRETCH as property value.
2093
2094The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
2095PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
2096properties described below.
2097
2098The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
2099characters having the `display' property.
2100
2101- :width WIDTH
2102
2103Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
2104character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
2105
2106- :relative-width FACTOR
2107
2108Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
2109first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
2110same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
2111width of that character by FACTOR.
2112
2113- :align-to HPOS
2114
2115Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
2116value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
2117
2118Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
2119
2120- :height HEIGHT
2121
2122Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
2123normal line height.
2124
2125- :relative-height FACTOR
2126
2127The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
2128of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
2129
2130- :ascent ASCENT
2131
2132Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
2133used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
2134baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
2135equal to 100.
2136
2137You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
2138
2139*** Images
2140
2141A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
2142. IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
2143in the display, the characters having this display specification in
2144their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
2145the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
2146`(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
2147area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
2148the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
2149as display specification.
2150
2151*** Other display properties
2152
2153- :space-width FACTOR
2154
2155Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
2156should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
2157integer or float.
2158
2159- :height HEIGHT
2160
2161Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
2162
2163If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
2164means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
2165the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
2166``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
2167a font is available counts as a step.
2168
2169If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
2170as tall as the frame's default font.
2171
2172If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
2173height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
2174
2175Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
2176`height' bound to the current specified font height.
2177
2178- :raise FACTOR
2179
2180FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
2181font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
2182raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
2183amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
2184`:height' subproperty.
2185
2186*** Conditional display properties
2187
2188All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
2189has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
2190applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
2191During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
2192the text having the `display' property.
2193
2194The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
2195`(:when t SPEC)'.
2196
2197+++
2198** New menu separator types.
2199
2200Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
2201item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
2202treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
2203to specify other menu separator types.
2204
2205- `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
2206
2207No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
2208separator occurs.
2209
2210- `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
2211
2212A single line in the menu's foreground color.
2213
2214- `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
2215
2216A double line in the menu's foreground color.
2217
2218- `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
2219
2220A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2221
2222- `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
2223
2224A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2225
2226- `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
2227
2228A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
2229displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
2230
2231- `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
2232
2233A single line with 3D raised appearance.
2234
2235- `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
2236
2237A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
2238
2239- `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
2240
2241A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
2242
2243- `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
2244
2245Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2246
2247- `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
2248
2249Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
2250
2251- `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
2252
2253Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2254
2255- `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
2256
2257Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
2258
2259Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
2260the corresponding single-line separators.
2261
2262+++
2263** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
2264
2265The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
2266`scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
2267Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
2268that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
2269default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
2270default background is the background color of the frame, and the
2271default foreground is black.
2272
2273The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
2274(class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
2275`ScrollBarBackground').
2276
2277Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
2278settings for scroll bar colors.
2279
2280+++
2281** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
2282display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
2283
2284---
2285** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
2286starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
2287on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
2288line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
2289the original window start.
2290
2291---
2292** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
2293`hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
2294now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
2295
2296+++
2297** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
2298
2299A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
2300`window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
2301windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
2302other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
2303
2304The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
2305fixed-width and fixed-height.
2306
2307 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
2308
2309A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
2310fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
2311window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
2312change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
2313temporarily to nil, for example
2314
2315 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
2316 (enlarge-window 10))
2317
79214ddf 2318Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
a933dad1 2319or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
e33b0397
DL
2320^L
2321* Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
2322
2323** Not new, but not mentioned before:
2324M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
a933dad1
DL
2325\f
2326* Changes in Emacs 20.4
2327
2328** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
2329
2330You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
2331Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
2332`.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
2333
2334If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
2335is the one that is used.
2336
2337** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
2338the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
2339Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
2340separate from the command's regular output.
2341Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
2342says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
2343In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
2344the buffer name.
2345
2346When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
2347output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
2348it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
2349cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
2350
2351** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
2352the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
2353is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
2354created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
2355
2356** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
2357example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
2358match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
2359quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
2360
2361** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
2362now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
2363if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
2364they never ignore case.
2365
2366** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
2367under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
2368applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
2369of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
2370just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
2371convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
2372part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
2373
2374If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
2375the same format that was used in the file before.
2376
2377You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
2378`inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
2379
2380** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
2381renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
2382This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
2383
2384** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
2385The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
2386buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2387your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2388is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2389end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2390Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2391
2392The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2393eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2394control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2395format. You can now customize these variables.
2396
2397** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2398filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2399filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2400enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2401
2402** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2403in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2404windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2405
2406** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2407dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2408doesn't have any effect.
2409
2410** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2411not one per buffer.
2412
2413** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2414use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2415 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2416
2417** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2418To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2419`auto-show-mode' command.
2420
2421** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2422avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2423versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2424choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2425occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2426
2427** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2428cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2429
2430** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2431character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2432feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2433
2434** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2435the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2436interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2437and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2438
2439** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2440
2441The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2442that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2443one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2444codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2445set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2446
2447Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2448from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2449
2450IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2451equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2452a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2453`?' on other systems.
2454
2455IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2456feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2457Unix.
2458
2459Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2460current codepage when it starts.
2461
2462** Mail changes
2463
2464*** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2465default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2466default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2467sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2468buffer-file-coding-system.
2469
2470You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2471sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2472mail.
2473
2474*** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2475if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2476Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2477list of possible coding systems.
2478
2479** CC Mode changes
2480
2481*** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2482modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2483longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2484docstring for details.
2485
2486*** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2487symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2488found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2489prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2490lineup functions use this feature currently.
2491
2492*** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2493"finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2494
2495*** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2496"catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2497
2498*** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2499from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2500symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2501c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2502anonymous classes.
2503
2504*** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2505syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2506
2507*** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2508inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2509support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2510function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2511
2512*** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2513(i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2514brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2515c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2516(brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2517
2518*** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2519
2520*** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2521
2522*** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2523for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2524
2525*** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2526
2527*** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2528associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2529This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2530circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2531class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2532
2533** Gnus changes.
2534
2535*** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2536added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2537Gnus manual for the full story.
2538
2539*** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2540before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2541group, which is created automatically.
2542
2543*** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2544values.
2545
2546*** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2547
2548*** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2549outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2550
2551*** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2552`C-u C-c C-c'.
2553
2554*** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2555
2556*** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2557re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2558
2559*** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2560
2561*** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2562Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2563
2564*** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2565`a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2566
2567*** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2568control over simplification.
2569
2570*** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2571
2572*** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2573limit.
2574
2575*** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2576
2577*** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2578
79214ddf 2579*** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
a933dad1
DL
2580If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2581rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2582
2583*** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2584`a' forces normal posting method.
2585
2586*** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2587-- `W d'.
2588
2589*** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2590to a non-nil value.
2591
2592*** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2593where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2594
2595*** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2596has been added.
2597
2598*** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2599
2600*** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2601
2602*** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2603`gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2604
2605*** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2606`message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2607
2608*** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
2609
2610*** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
2611been added.
2612
2613*** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
2614`gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
2615
2616*** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
2617updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
2618
2619*** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
2620
2621*** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
2622
2623*** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
2624
2625** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
2626
2627*** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
2628options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
2629nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
2630
2631*** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
2632TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
2633of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
2634TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
2635can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
2636
2637*** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
2638All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
2639but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
2640the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
2641
2642*** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
2643the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
2644buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
2645mismatch.
2646
2647** Changes to RefTeX mode
2648
2649*** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
2650file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
2651
2652*** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
2653lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
2654characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
2655removed from the label.
2656
2657*** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
2658a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
2659
2660*** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
2661customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
2662
2663*** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
2664`reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
79214ddf 2665expressions.
a933dad1
DL
2666
2667*** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
2668
2669** New/deleted modes and packages
2670
2671*** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
2672SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
2673
2674*** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
2675editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
2676SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
2677
2678*** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
2679changes with a special face.
2680
2681*** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
2682this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
2683Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
2684\f
2685* MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
2686
2687** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
2688This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
2689conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
2690and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
2691check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
2692
2693The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
2694Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
2695distribution when the config.bat script is run.
2696
2697** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
2698MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
2699controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
2700directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
2701Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
2702on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
2703string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
2704program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
2705printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
2706
2707** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
2708output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
2709available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
2710input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
2711temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
2712program.
2713
2714An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
2715and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
2716programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
2717automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
2718as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
2719ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
2720
2721** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
2722a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
2723MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
2724was not documented clearly before.
2725
2726** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
2727This includes Tetris and Snake.
2728\f
2729* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
2730
2731** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
2732return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
2733They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
2734meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
2735
2736** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
2737WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
2738and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
2739
2740** Changes in the file-attributes function.
2741
2742*** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
2743It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
2744
2745*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
2746the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
2747integers.
2748
2749** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
2750files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
2751arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
2752file names and attributes are returned.
2753
2754** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
2755sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
2756accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
2757It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
2758returns the result.
2759
2760** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
2761to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
2762
2763** New functions for base64 conversion:
2764
2765The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
2766into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
2767performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
2768optionally.
2769
2770Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
2771job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
2772
2773**
2774The new function process-running-child-p
2775will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
2776terminal to its own child process.
2777
2778** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
2779when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
2780to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
2781itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
2782
2783** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
2784be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
2785
2786** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
2787:included is an alias for :visible.
2788
2789easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
2790easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
2791to move or copy menu entries.
2792
2793** Multibyte editing changes
2794
2795*** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
2796an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
2797make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
2798work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
2799char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
2800 (setq char (sref str idx)
2801 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
2802The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
2803
2804If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
2805(say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
2806 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
2807
2808*** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
2809region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
2810deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
2811
2812 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
2813
2814This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
2815across the boundary.
2816
2817*** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
2818`unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
2819 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
2820 contains 8-bit characters.
2821 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
2822 contains invalid characters.
2823
2824*** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
2825text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
2826preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
2827text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
2828way.
2829
2830*** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
2831If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
2832end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
2833prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
2834
2835*** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
2836compose Thai characters in a string.
2837
2838** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
2839argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
2840for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
2841menus should always use the third argument.
2842
2843** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
2844read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
2845arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
2846input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
2847
2848** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
2849of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
2850programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
2851inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
2852
2853** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
2854the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
2855returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
2856echo area contents.
2857
2858 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
2859
2860** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
2861NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
2862requested feature cannot be loaded.
2863
2864** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
2865foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
79214ddf 2866means to clear out that attribute.
a933dad1
DL
2867
2868** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
2869gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
2870
2871** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
2872read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
2873unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
2874end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
2875
2876** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
2877the gap of the current buffer.
2878
2879** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
2880to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
2881current buffer.
2882
2883** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
2884facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
2885These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
2886it back in after any modifications have been made.
2887\f
2888* Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
2889
2890** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
2891the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
2892/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
2893directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
2894subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
2895
2896Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
2897names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
2898Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
2899which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
2900these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
2901
2902Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
2903starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
2904time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
2905
2906This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
2907Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
2908to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
2909subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
2910`.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
2911results.
2912
2913** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
2914GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
2915that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
2916fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
2917\f
2918* Changes in Emacs 20.3
2919
2920** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
2921including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
2922it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
2923perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
2924
2925** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
2926specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
2927region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
2928further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
2929command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
2930within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
2931are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
2932region.
2933
2934In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
2935selective undo.
2936
2937** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
2938unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
2939buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
2940effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
2941Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
2942
2943The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
2944though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
2945-*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
2946load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
2947
2948** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
2949no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
2950enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
2951something that most users not do.
2952
2953** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
2954operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
2955The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
2956applications.
2957
2958C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
2959pasting operations.
2960
2961** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
2962setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
2963like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
2964printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
2965`ps-printer-name'.
2966
2967** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
2968minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
2969any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
2970except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
2971incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
2972hits a new word.
2973
2974Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
2975Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
2976to be confused by TeX commands.
2977
2978You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
2979correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
2980clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
2981of various alternative replacements and actions.
2982
2983Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
2984the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
2985corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
2986alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
2987flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
2988
2989Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
2990flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
2991
2992** Changes in input method usage.
2993
2994Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
2995the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
2996respectively.
2997
2998You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
2999
3000If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
3001of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
3002
3003The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
3004that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
3005
3006 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
3007
3008 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
3009
3010 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
3011 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
3012
3013 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
79214ddf 3014 given in the following case:
a933dad1
DL
3015 o When you are using a complex input method.
3016 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
3017
3018If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
3019input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
3020and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
3021setting it to t is helpful.
3022
3023The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
3024
3025In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
3026keys:
3027 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
3028 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
3029 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
3030These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
3031environment.
3032
3033** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
3034names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
3035minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
3036get
3037
3038 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
3039
3040which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
3041
3042Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
3043Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
3044
3045** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
3046at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
3047its owner and group.
3048
3049** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
3050Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
3051
3052** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
3053contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
3054
3055** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
3056which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
3057in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
3058by the left edge of the rectangle.
3059
3060** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
3061increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
3062C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
3063for writing keyboard macros.
3064
3065** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
3066files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
3067frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
3068the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
3069additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
3070info.
3071
3072** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
3073
3074** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
3075query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
3076contents only.
3077
3078** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
3079confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
3080the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
3081says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
3082
3083** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
3084non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
3085literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
3086
3087** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
3088now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
3089Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
3090inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
3091
3092** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
3093failure if the command produces no output.
3094
3095** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
3096manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
3097the mouse.
3098
3099** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
3100mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
3101function and variable names.
3102
3103** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
3104reading specific files. This has higher priority than
3105file-coding-system-alist.
3106
3107** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
3108t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
3109converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
3110the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
3111according to the current fontset.
3112
3113** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
3114
3115The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
3116that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
3117nonascii-insert-offset.
3118
3119For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
3120enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
3121nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
3122characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
3123
3124** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
3125an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
3126
3127** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
3128letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
3129
3130** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
3131are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
3132command keys.
3133
3134** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
3135user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
3136
3137Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
3138user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
3139all variables that have documentation.
3140
3141** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
3142shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
3143that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
3144minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
3145it should show; the default is 20.
3146
3147Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
3148the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
3149of your input.
3150
3151** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
3152all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
3153recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
3154argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
3155the customizable options which were changed since that version.
3156Newly added options are included as well.
3157
3158If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
3159then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
3160for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
3161
3162This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
3163Customize menu.
3164
3165** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
3166the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
3167
3168** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
3169buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
3170invoked.
3171
3172** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
3173that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
3174The default is 1.
3175
3176** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
3177syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
3178new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
3179(C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
3180sensibly.
3181
3182** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
3183
3184** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
3185value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
3186two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
3187
3188** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
3189reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
3190for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
3191every night.
3192
3193** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
3194the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
3195
3196** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
3197read and post multi-lingual articles.
3198
3199** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
3200doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
3201be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
3202outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
3203the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
79214ddf 3204made invisible again.
a933dad1
DL
3205
3206** Mail reading and sending changes
3207
3208*** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
3209the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
3210changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
3211toggle.
3212
3213*** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
3214now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
3215summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
3216the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
3217rmail-default-body-file.
3218
3219*** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
3220longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
3221handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
3222
3223*** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
3224it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
3225is evaluated to insert the signature.
3226
3227*** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
3228outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
3229handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
3230putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
3231transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
3232especially interested in trying feedmail.
3233
3234feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
3235feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
3236provided by feedmail are:
3237
3238**** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
3239stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
3240there is also a queue for draft messages
3241
3242**** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
3243be prompted for confirmation
3244
3245**** does smart filling of address headers
3246
3247**** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
3248the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
3249can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
3250
3251**** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
3252the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
3253/usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
3254function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
3255
3256** Dired changes
3257
3258*** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
3259files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
3260
3261*** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
3262run Dired on the directory name at point.
3263
3264*** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
3265files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
3266for a specified regexp.
3267
3268** VC Changes
3269
3270*** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
3271conveniently.
3272
3273*** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
3274faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
3275Dired.
3276
3277VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
3278directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
3279listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
3280currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
3281
3282You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
3283then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
3284vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
3285control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
3286on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
3287
3288All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
3289is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
3290`v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
3291the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
3292`vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
3293
3294The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
3295toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
79214ddf 3296VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
a933dad1
DL
3297`* l', to mark all files currently locked.
3298
3299Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
3300ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
3301command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
3302
3303*** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
3304file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
3305session to resolve them.
3306
3307Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
3308resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
3309contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
3310uses as well).
3311
3312*** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
3313command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
3314you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
3315either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
3316branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
3317If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
3318using ediff.
3319
3320** Changes in Font Lock
3321
3322*** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
3323are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
3324use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
3325unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
3326compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
3327
3328** Frame name display changes
3329
3330*** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
3331frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
3332raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
3333when many frames are invisible or iconified.
3334
3335*** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
3336frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
3337menu.
3338
3339** Comint (subshell) changes
3340
3341*** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
3342subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
3343with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
3344
3345*** There are new commands in Comint mode.
3346
3347C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
3348that is, the line after the last line you got.
3349You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
3350
3351C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
3352send the current line together with the following line, when you send
3353the following line.
3354
3355C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
3356which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
3357previously sent input.
3358
3359C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
3360it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
3361as the search string.
3362
3363*** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
3364automatically in compilation-mode windows.
3365
3366** C mode changes
3367
3368*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
3369and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
3370assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
79214ddf 3371definition.
a933dad1
DL
3372
3373*** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
3374(i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
3375Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
3376style is still the default however.
3377
3378*** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
3379
3380*** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
3381are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
3382them. They do not have key bindings by default.
3383
3384*** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
3385and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
3386
3387*** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3388namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3389
3390*** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3391makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3392
3393*** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3394c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3395
3396*** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3397should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3398package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3399variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3400
3401** Changes to hippie-expand.
3402
79214ddf 3403*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
a933dad1
DL
3404non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3405which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3406
3407*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3408non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3409expanding dynamically.
3410
3411*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3412non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3413
3414*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3415non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3416this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3417expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3418
3419*** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3420
3421** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3422
3423*** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3424bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3425automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3426bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3427against the first word in the title.
3428
3429*** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3430capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3431bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
79214ddf 3432lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
a933dad1 3433lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
79214ddf 3434bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
a933dad1
DL
3435
3436*** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3437generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3438replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3439bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3440
3441** Changes in vcursor.el.
3442
3443*** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3444and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3445variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3446entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3447`vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3448in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3449
3450*** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3451Editing group once the package is loaded.
3452
3453*** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3454generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3455vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3456
3457*** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3458vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3459
3460** Ispell changes.
3461
79214ddf
FP
3462*** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3463buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
a933dad1
DL
3464are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3465
3466*** Generic region skipping implemented.
3467A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3468and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3469defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
79214ddf 3470include:
a933dad1
DL
3471
3472 o URLs are automatically skipped
3473 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3474
3475*** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3476
3477** Changes to RefTeX mode
3478
3479RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3480large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3481re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3482section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3483
3484*** New recursive parser.
3485
3486The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3487entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3488recursive parser scans the individual files.
3489
3490*** Parsing only part of a document.
79214ddf 3491
a933dad1
DL
3492Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3493partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3494the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3495
3496 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3497
3498*** Storing parsing information in a file.
3499
3500This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3501
3502 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3503
3504*** Using multiple selection buffers
3505
3506If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3507for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3508
3509 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3510
3511*** References to external documents.
3512
3513The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3514documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3515documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3516macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3517RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3518the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3519The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3520
3521*** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3522
3523The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3524and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3525
3526Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3527the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3528
3529*** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3530
3531The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3532buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3533
3534*** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3535
3536The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3537contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3538`reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3539have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3540enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3541at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3542more.
3543
3544*** Support for the varioref package
3545
3546The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3547
3548*** New hooks
3549
3550Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3551and citations are created. These hooks are
3552`reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3553`reftex-format-cite-function'.
3554
3555*** Citations outside LaTeX
3556
3557The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3558a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3559
3560*** Short context is no longer fontified.
3561
3562The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3563fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3564fontified, use
3565
3566 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3567
3568** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3569With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3570the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3571directories that contain the same file name.
3572
3573Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3574Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3575file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3576Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3577have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3578names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3579directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3580directory.
3581
3582** New modes and packages
3583
3584*** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3585It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3586it, but some do not.
3587
3588*** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3589code.
3590
3591*** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3592current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3593around in a buffer.
3594
3595Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3596
3597*** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3598uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3599be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3600established system of notation similar to Chess.
3601
3602*** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3603documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3604guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3605
3606*** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3607available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
3608system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
3609simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
3610functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
3611the like.
3612
3613*** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
3614identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
3615
3616*** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
3617within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
3618used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
3619the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
3620
3621*** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
3622
3623 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
3624 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
3625 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
3626 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
3627 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
3628 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
3629 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
3630 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
3631 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
3632 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
3633 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
3634
3635 Platform-specific modes:
3636
3637 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
3638 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
3639 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
3640 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
3641 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
3642 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
3643 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
3644 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
3645 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
3646\f
3647* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3648
3649** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
3650use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
3651That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
3652Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
3653
3654Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
3655you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
3656consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
3657
3658** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
3659and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
3660specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
3661searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
3662
3663** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
3664multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
3665character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
3666environment.
3667
3668** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
3669take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
3670string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
3671current input method for reading this one event.
3672
3673** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
3674now control whether to output certain characters as
3675backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
3676non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
3677characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
3678in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
3679\f
3680* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3681
3682** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
3683of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
3684
3685** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
3686in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
3687always increases point by 1.
3688
3689The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
3690considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
3691
3692See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
3693
3694** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
3695Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
3696default value changed. For example,
3697
3698 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
3699 :type 'integer
3700 :group 'foo
3701 :version "20.3")
3702
79214ddf 3703 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
a933dad1
DL
3704 :version "20.3")
3705
3706If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
3707default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
3708is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
3709`:version' in the top level group.
3710
3711This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
3712
3713** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
3714starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
3715
3716However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
3717symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
3718support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
3719to themselves.
3720
3721If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
3722this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
3723values whatever.
3724
3725** There is a new debugger command, R.
3726It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
3727in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
3728
3729** Frame-local variables.
3730
3731You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
3732the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
3733local bindings for that variable.
3734
3735These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
3736frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
3737modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
3738parameter name.
3739
3740Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
3741Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
3742active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
3743that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
3744
3745It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
3746clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
3747very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
3748through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
3749
3750** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
3751"symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
3752evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
3753makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
3754See the documentation in sregex.el.
3755
3756** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
3757is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
3758parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
3759The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
3760
3761** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
3762If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
3763
3764** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
3765known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
3766define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
3767
3768** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
3769when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
3770it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
3771history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
3772
3773The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
3774return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
3775empty input.
3776
3777** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
3778for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
3779`iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
3780Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
3781`read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
3782
3783** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
3784echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
3785a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
3786default password to use if the user enters nothing.
3787
3788** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
3789specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
3790function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
3791place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
3792non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
3793
3794** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
3795If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
3796up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
3797end of the window, even if this requires computation.
3798
3799** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
3800which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
3801If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
3802
3803** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
3804holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
3805was directed to display this buffer.
3806
3807** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
3808with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
3809describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
3810other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
3811set-window-configuration.
3812
3813** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
3814window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
3815positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
3816windows and the choice of buffers to display.
3817
3818** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
3819override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
3820look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
3821
3822If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
3823non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
3824map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
3825
3826minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
3827and it is meant to be set by major modes.
3828
3829** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
3830except that it discards all text properties from the result.
3831
3832** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
3833USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
3834floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
3835
3836** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
3837to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
3838in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
3839it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
3840
3841** Menu changes
3842
3843*** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
3844keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
3845better supported.
3846
3847The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
3848a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
3849you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
3850can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
3851then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
3852
3853*** A new format for menu items is supported.
3854
3855In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
3856 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
3857defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
3858starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
3859
3860The format is:
3861 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
3862 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
3863where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
3864string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
3865The supported properties include
3866
3867:enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3868 item is enabled.
3869:visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3870 item should appear in the menu.
79214ddf 3871:filter FILTER-FN
a933dad1
DL
3872 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
3873 which will be REAL-BINDING.
3874 It should return a binding to use instead.
3875:keys DESCRIPTION
3876 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
3877 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
3878 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
3879:key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
3880 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
3881 keyboard binding.
3882:key-sequence nil
3883 This means that the command normally has no
3884 keyboard equivalent.
3885:help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
3886:button (TYPE . SELECTED)
3887 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
3888 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
3889 value says whether this button is currently selected.
3890
3891Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
3892Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
3893
3894(menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
3895
3896** New event types
3897
3898*** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
3899mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
3900corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
3901which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
3902
3903 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
3904
3905where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3906same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
3907indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
3908negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
3909the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
3910forward, away from the user.
3911
3912As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3913
3914*** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
3915files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
3916and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
3917filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
3918loaded into Emacs. The format is:
3919
3920 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
3921
3922where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3923same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
3924that were dragged and dropped.
3925
3926As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3927
3928** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
3929
3930*** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
3931any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
3932to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
3933
3934*** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
3935can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
3936that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
3937
3938*** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
3939in Emacs 19 and before.
3940
3941The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
3942The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
3943
3944*** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
3945buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
3946unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
3947representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
3948
3949This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
3950as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
3951viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
3952one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
3953will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
3954
3955This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
3956representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
3957(including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
3958consistent with the new representation.
3959
3960*** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
3961representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
3962about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
3963however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3964
3965The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
3966nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
3967using the table nonascii-translation-table.
3968
3969*** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
3970representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
3971representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3972
3973The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
3974loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
3975is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
3976
3977*** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3978which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
3979
3980*** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3981which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
3982
3983*** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
3984portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
3985so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
3986You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
3987
3988*** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
3989it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
3990
3991*** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
3992convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
3993buffer or string being searched.
3994
3995One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
3996[...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
3997searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
3998searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
3999obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
4000you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
4001expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
4002
4003*** Structure of coding system changed.
4004
4005All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
4006by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
4007which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
4008as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
4009vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
4010your own alias name of a coding system by the function
4011define-coding-system-alias.
4012
4013The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
4014the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
4015access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
4016pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
4017character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
4018safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
4019'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
4020`iso-8859-1'.
4021
4022Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
4023The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
4024coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
4025(coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
4026
4027Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
4028also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
4029are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
4030the other character sets and read it back correctly.
4031
4032*** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
4033proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
4034This function requires a user interaction.
4035
4036*** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
4037find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
4038select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
4039systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
4040a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
4041select-safe-coding-system.
4042
4043*** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
4044decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
4045last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
4046was done.
4047
4048*** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
4049used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
4050coding systems used by some specific language environment.
4051
4052*** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
4053return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
4054characters are found, they now return a list of single element
4055`undecided' or its subsidiaries.
4056
4057*** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
4058coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
4059coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
4060converted.
4061
4062*** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
4063coding system for communicating with other X clients.
4064
4065*** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
4066character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
4067character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
4068each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
4069either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
4070range of characters.
4071
4072*** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
4073Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
4074
4075*** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
4076in the current buffer at position POS.
4077
4078*** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
4079input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
4080function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
4081character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
4082event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
4083binding input-method-function to nil.
4084
4085The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
4086method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
4087input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
4088the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
4089not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
4090
4091The input method function is not called when reading the second and
4092subsequent events of a key sequence.
4093
4094*** You can customize any language environment by using
4095set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
4096
4097The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
4098customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
4099instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
4100environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
4101exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
4102\f
4103* Changes in Emacs 20.1
4104
4105** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
4106options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
4107at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
4108tree structure.
4109
4110M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
4111user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
4112
4113With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
4114session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
4115in your .emacs file.)
4116
4117** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
4118You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
4119
4120** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
4121This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
4122
4123** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
4124immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
4125kills the region.
4126
4127The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
4128delete the character before point, as usual.
4129
4130** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
4131on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
4132by setting search-highlight to nil.)
4133
4134** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
4135insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
4136the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
4137onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
4138history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
4139past.)
4140
4141** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
4142This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
4143in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
4144TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
4145makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
4146
4147As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
4148and is an alias for it.
4149
4150If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
4151use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
4152
4153** Scrolling changes
4154
4155*** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
4156position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
4157
4158In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
4159on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
4160where it started.
4161
4162*** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
4163move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
4164screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
4165does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
4166
4167*** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
4168top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
4169comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
4170recenters the window.
4171
4172** International character set support (MULE)
4173
4174Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
4175including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
4176Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
4177Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
4178features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
4179MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
4180
4181Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
4182coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
4183character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
4184variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
4185into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
4186
4187Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
4188generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
4189supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
4190language, to make it possible to type them.
4191
4192The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
4193character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
4194
4195The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
4196to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
4197
4198You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
4199
4200 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
4201
4202Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
4203characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
4204argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
4205already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
4206characters for their work until they want to change.
4207
4208*** Input methods
4209
4210An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
4211specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
4212has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
4213the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
4214support several input methods.
4215
4216The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
4217another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
4218work.
4219
4220A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
4221characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
4222composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
4223consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
4224sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
4225letter.
4226
4227The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
4228by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
4229First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
4230marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
4231mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
4232
4233None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
4234they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
4235phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
4236converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
4237
4238Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
4239word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
4240typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
4241the first guess is wrong.
4242
4243*** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
4244turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
4245
4246If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
4247byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
4248they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
4249the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
4250
4251However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
4252use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
4253includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
4254translate automatically to and from either one.
4255
4256*** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
4257
4258Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
4259file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
4260sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
4261what you want.
4262
4263If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
4264example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
4265system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
4266multibyte characters in that buffer.
4267
4268If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
4269character conversion as well.
4270
4271*** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
4272
4273A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
4274Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
4275requires using many fonts.
4276
4277Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
4278collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
4279
4280A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
4281the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
4282have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
4283you would use a font.
4284
4285If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
4286specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
4287display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
4288
4289The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
4290(that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
4291characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
4292or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
4293and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
4294
4295*** Defining fontsets.
4296
4297Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
4298chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
4299with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
4300
4301Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
4302of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
4303`fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
4304standard fontset are created automatically.
4305
4306If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
4307argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
4308FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
4309with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
4310name is `fontset-startup'.
4311
4312Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
4313The resource value should have this form:
4314 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
4315FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
4316 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
4317 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
4318 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
4319The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
4320of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
4321CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
4322FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
4323
4324Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
4325last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
4326You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
4327
4328For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
4329font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
4330following resource,
4331 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
4332the font for ASCII is generated as below:
4333 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
4334Here is the substitution rule:
4335 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
4336 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
4337 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
4338 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
4339 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
4340
4341The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
4342fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
4343that function explicitly to create a fontset.
4344
4345With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
4346like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
4347name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
4348fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
4349fontsets.
4350
4351*** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
4352defaults for a particular choice of language.
4353
4354Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
4355method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
4356visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
4357already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
4358language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
4359system for new files that you create.
4360
4361It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
4362set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
4363whole Emacs session.
4364
4365For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
4366chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
4367with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
4368
4369*** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
4370specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
4371specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
4372the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
4373coding systems that Emacs supports.
4374
4375*** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
4376lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
4377This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
4378After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
4379is used for *the immediately following command*.
4380
4381So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
4382write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
4383
4384If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
4385then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
4386
4387For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4388visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4389
4390*** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4391construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4392to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4393specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4394of the file.
4395
4396*** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4397the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4398code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4399translated into that character code.
4400
4401This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4402various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4403
4404By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4405
4406*** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4407the coding system for keyboard input.
4408
4409Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4410with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4411some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4412
4413By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4414
4415Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4416input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4417translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4418to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4419designed to work with terminals.
4420
4421*** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4422specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4423This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4424has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4425translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4426in the corresponding buffer.
4427
4428By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4429
4430*** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4431to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4432It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4433
4434*** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4435an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4436command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4437want to use.
4438
4439C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4440method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4441
4442*** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4443layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4444remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4445which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4446
4447*** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4448the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4449related information.
4450
4451*** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4452HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4453scripts.
4454
4455*** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4456information about the support for a particular language.
4457You specify the language as an argument.
4458
4459*** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4460the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4461first dash.
4462
4463A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4464(except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4465whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
44661 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4467
4468 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4469 B big5 (Chinese)
4470 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4471 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4472 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4473 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4474 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4475 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4476 K euc-korea (Korean)
4477 R koi8 (Russian)
4478 Q tibetan
4479 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4480 T lao
4481 T tis620 (Thai)
4482 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4483 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4484 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4485 v viqr (Vietnamese)
4486 z hz (Chinese)
4487
4488When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4489two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4490coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4491keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4492
4493*** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4494conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4495
4496When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4497into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4498rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4499Rmail files themselves.
4500
4501*** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4502conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4503
4504Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4505for sending mail:
4506
4507- If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4508- Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4509- Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4510 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4511- Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4512
4513*** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4514to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4515Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4516translations.
4517
4518** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4519of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4520insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4521without any conversion.
4522
4523** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4524You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4525RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4526any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4527
4528** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4529functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4530
4531Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4532Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4533
4534Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4535mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4536
4537** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4538complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4539in the buffer before point.
4540
4541With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4542symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4543you are using.
4544
4545With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4546just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4547
4548** File locking works with NFS now.
4549
4550The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4551in the same directory as FILENAME.
4552
4553This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4554works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4555can become a bottleneck.
4556
4557The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4558does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4559create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4560file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4561rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4562so useful that the change is worth while.
4563
4564When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4565are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4566collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4567tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4568
4569** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4570it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4571show-paren-mode.
4572
4573** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4574selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4575delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4576
4577** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4578within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4579complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4580
4581** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4582it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4583set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4584
4585** Changes in View mode.
4586
4587*** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4588Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4589
4590*** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4591view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4592
4593*** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4594previous state.
4595
4596*** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4597scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4598
4599*** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4600non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4601not just the selected window.
4602
4603*** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4604read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4605turns View mode on or off.
4606
4607*** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
4608how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
4609delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
4610
4611** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
4612now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
4613
4614** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
4615has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
4616presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
4617which version to compare with.
4618
4619** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
79214ddf 4620blocks if a match is inside the block.
a933dad1
DL
4621
4622The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
4623is outside the block. By customizing the variable
4624isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
4625shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
4626
4627By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
4628of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
4629blocks, all of them or none.
4630
4631** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
4632current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
4633confirmation first.
4634
4635** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
4636now changes the major mode according to that file name.
4637However, the mode will not be changed if
4638(1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
4639(2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
4640 not suitable for ordinary files, or
4641(3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
4642
4643This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
4644
4645However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
4646these commands do not change the major mode.
4647
4648** M-x occur changes.
4649
4650*** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
4651it performs a case-sensitive search.
4652
4653*** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
4654if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
4655using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
4656
4657** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
4658in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
4659window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
4660that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
4661buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
4662
4663** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
4664after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
4665appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
4666come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
4667
4668** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4669selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
4670buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
4671
4672** Outline mode changes.
4673
4674*** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
4675
4676*** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
4677
4678** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
4679you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
4680Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
4681was already active.
4682
4683The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
4684unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
4685get confused by it.
4686
4687If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
4688set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
4689
4690** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
4691
4692*** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4693conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
4694character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
4695including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
4696
4697The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
4698mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
4699copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
4700
4701*** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
4702are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
4703values.
4704
4705`dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
4706case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
4707`dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
4708case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
4709
4710** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
4711certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
4712can be. The default value is 30.
4713
4714** Changes in Mail mode.
4715
4716*** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
4717Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
4718composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
4719`mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
4720`sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
4721behavior.
4722
4723C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
4724compose-mail-other-frame.
4725
4726*** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
4727the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
4728replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
4729buffer that shows the original message.
4730
4731*** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
4732with separator lines around the contents.
4733
4734*** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
4735in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
4736definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
4737need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
4738
4739*** New features in the mail-complete command.
4740
4741**** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
4742for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
4743controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
4744Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
4745
4746**** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
4747to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
4748/etc/passwd.
4749
4750**** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
4751to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
4752/etc/passwd.
4753
4754** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
4755special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
4756directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
4757reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
4758
4759Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
4760when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
4761be taken to be magic.
4762
4763** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
4764files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
4765available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
4766
4767M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
4768(-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
4769
4770** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
4771suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
4772
4773In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
4774
4775new key dired.el binding old key
4776------- ---------------- -------
4777 * c dired-change-marks c
4778 * m dired-mark m
4779 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
4780 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
4781 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
4782 * u dired-unmark u
4783 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
4784 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
4785 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
4786 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
4787 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
4788 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
4789
4790** Rmail changes.
4791
4792*** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
4793saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
4794chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
4795each time you run it.
4796
4797*** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
4798whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
4799
4800*** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
4801messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
4802means to move in the opposite direction.
4803
4804*** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
4805you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
4806
4807*** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
4808just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
4809It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
4810can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
4811for output.
4812
4813** Gnus changes.
4814
4815*** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
4816
79214ddf
FP
4817*** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
4818Gnus.
a933dad1 4819
79214ddf 4820*** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
a933dad1
DL
4821`and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
4822
4823*** Article washing status can be displayed in the
4824article mode line.
4825
4826*** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
4827
4828*** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
4829
4830(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
4831
4832*** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
4833are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
4834`gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
4835
4836*** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
4837
4838*** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
4839
4840*** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
4841See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
4842
4843*** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
4844Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
4845used to pick articles.
4846
4847*** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
4848another have been added.
4849
4850 `M-x gnus-change-server'
4851
4852*** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
4853generating lines in buffers.
4854
4855*** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
4856`M-C-_'.
4857
4858*** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
4859
4860*** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
4861
4862 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
4863
4864*** Scores can be decayed.
79214ddf 4865
a933dad1
DL
4866 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
4867
4868*** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
4869Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
4870
4871*** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
4872the native server.
4873
4874 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
4875
4876*** A new command for reading collections of documents
4877(nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
4878
4879*** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
4880
4881*** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
4882even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
4883
4884*** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
4885(DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
4886
4887 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
4888 a group.
4889
4890*** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
4891sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
4892
4893 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
4894
4895*** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
4896
4897 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
4898
4899*** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
79214ddf 4900
a933dad1
DL
4901 Use the `Y c' command.
4902
4903*** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
4904
4905*** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
4906
4907 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
4908
4909*** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
4910from incoming mail before saving the mail.
79214ddf 4911
a933dad1
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4912 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
4913
4914*** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
4915
4916*** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
4917the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
4918
4919 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
4920
4921Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
4922and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
4923from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
4924hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
4925this issue.)
4926
4927Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
4928automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
4929particular news group. This can be done by:
4930
4931 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
4932
4933Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
4934of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
4935"XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
4936system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
4937for reading and posting).
4938
4939CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
4940 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
4941Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
4942newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
4943there.
4944
4945Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
4946default. Here are some of these default settings:
4947
4948 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
4949 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
4950 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
4951 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
4952 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
4953
4954When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
4955the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
4956
4957** CC mode changes.
4958
4959*** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
4960code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
4961values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
4962this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
4963Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
4964loaded.
4965
4966If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
79214ddf 4967Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
a933dad1 4968style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
79214ddf
FP
4969share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
4970c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
a933dad1
DL
4971must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
4972
4973*** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
4974of the current buffer.
4975
4976*** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
4977it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
4978of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
4979
4980*** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
4981style that the Python developers like.
4982
4983*** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
4984This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
4985just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
4986
4987** VC Changes [new]
4988
4989** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
4990name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
4991directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
4992
4993This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
4994master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
4995developers.
4996
4997You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
4998RET in a buffer visiting that file.
4999
5000*** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
5001other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
5002writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
5003calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
5004
5005*** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
5006version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
5007
5008** Calendar changes.
5009
5010A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
5011of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
5012for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
5013
5014** ps-print changes
5015
79214ddf 5016There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
a933dad1
DL
5017
5018*** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
5019
5020The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
5021formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
5022`a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
5023`ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
5024It defaults to `letter'.
5025If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
5026
5027The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
79214ddf 5028of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
a933dad1
DL
5029non-nil means "landscape" mode.
5030
5031The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
5032It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
79214ddf 5033It defaults to 1.
a933dad1
DL
5034
5035*** Horizontal layout
5036
5037The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
5038`ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
5039All are measured in points.
5040
5041*** Vertical layout
5042
5043The vertical layout is determined by the variables
5044`ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
5045All are measured in points.
5046
5047*** Headers
5048
5049If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
5050`ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
5051margin above the text.
5052
79214ddf 5053If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
a933dad1
DL
5054framing box is printed around the header.
5055
5056The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
5057`ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
5058
79214ddf
FP
5059The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
5060`ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
a933dad1
DL
5061`ps-header-font-size'.
5062
5063*** Font managing
5064
5065The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
5066used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
5067`ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
5068elements to this alist.
5069
79214ddf 5070The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
a933dad1
DL
5071for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
5072
5073** hideshow changes.
5074
5075*** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
79214ddf 5076C++, ; for lisp).
a933dad1
DL
5077
5078*** Support for java-mode added.
5079
5080*** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
5081in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
5082
5083*** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
5084the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
5085way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
5086
5087*** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
5088robust and a lot faster.
5089
79214ddf 5090*** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
a933dad1
DL
5091
5092*** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
5093to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
5094documentation for more details.
5095
5096** Changes in Enriched mode.
5097
5098*** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
5099filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
5100of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
5101use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
5102the next time unless the fill-column is different.
5103
5104*** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
5105distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
5106as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
5107as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
5108
5109** Font Lock mode
5110
5111*** Custom support
5112
5113The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
5114font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
5115faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
5116group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
5117your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
5118consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
5119
5120You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
5121
5122*** Maximum decoration
5123
5124Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
5125default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
5126of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
5127supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
5128to get the old behavior.
5129
5130*** New support
5131
5132Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
5133
5134Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
5135support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
5136
5137*** Configurable support
5138
5139Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
5140additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
5141c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
5142java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
5143list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
5144of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
5145convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
5146
5147Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
5148way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
5149it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
5150
5151*** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
5152
5153You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
5154highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
5155for any mode.
5156
5157For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
5158
5159 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
5160
5161in your ~/.emacs.
5162
5163*** New faces
5164
5165Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
5166font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
5167distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
5168to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
5169
5170*** Changes to fast-lock support mode
5171
5172The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
5173cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
5174same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
5175
5176*** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
5177
5178The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
5179according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
5180the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
5181non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
5182refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
5183the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
5184Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
5185
5186This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
5187For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
5188this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
5189refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
5190containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
5191the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
5192
5193As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
5194
5195Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
5196Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
5197Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
5198new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
5199
5200If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
5201settings.
5202
5203** Ada mode changes.
5204
5205*** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
5206If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
5207procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
5208you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
5209stubs.
5210
5211*** There are two new commands:
5212 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
5213 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
5214
5215The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
5216`ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
79214ddf 5217`ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
a933dad1
DL
5218
5219*** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
5220is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
5221Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
5222
5223*** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
5224formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
5225places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
5226space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
5227
5228** Scheme mode changes.
5229
5230*** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
5231mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
5232for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
5233with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
5234have any effect.
5235
5236If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
5237still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
5238scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
5239variables as buffer-local variables.
5240
5241*** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
5242Use M-x dsssl-mode.
5243
5244** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
5245it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
5246buffer in Emacs.
5247
5248** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
5249constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
5250(in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
5251
5252** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
5253which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
5254the current defun.
5255
5256** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
5257following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
5258
5259** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
5260and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
5261necessary).
5262
5263** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
5264if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
5265these register values no longer become completely useless.
5266If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
5267asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
5268it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
5269
5270** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
5271example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
5272be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
5273you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
5274
5275You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
5276variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
5277file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
5278revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
5279only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
5280
5281** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
5282since it applies only to the current frame.
5283
5284** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
5285file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
5286and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
5287
5288This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
5289multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
5290variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
5291tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
5292instead of just the file you are editing.
5293
5294** RefTeX mode
5295
5296RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
5297and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
5298different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
5299multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
5300turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
5301
79214ddf 5302C-c ( reftex-label
a933dad1
DL
5303 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
5304 knows which kind of label is needed.
5305
5306C-c ) reftex-reference
5307 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
5308 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
5309
5310C-c [ reftex-citation
5311 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
5312 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
5313
5314C-c & reftex-view-crossref
5315 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
5316
5317C-c = reftex-toc
5318 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
5319 can quickly jump to every section.
79214ddf 5320
a933dad1
DL
5321Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
5322commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
5323Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
5324reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
5325C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
5326
5327** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5328
5329*** Info documentation is now available.
5330
5331*** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
5332both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
5333
5334*** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
5335bibtex-user-optional-fields.
5336
5337*** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
5338(use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
5339
5340*** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
5341entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
5342appropriate functions.
5343
5344*** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
5345entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
5346
5347*** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
5348been cleaned.
5349
5350*** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
5351bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
5352
5353*** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
5354shall be delimited.
5355
5356*** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
5357bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
5358bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
5359
5360*** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
5361field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
5362prefixed with `ALT'.
5363
5364*** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
5365bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
5366formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
5367documentation).
5368
5369*** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
5370documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
5371for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
5372
5373*** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
5374comma should be inserted at end of last field.
5375
5376*** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
5377alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
5378signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
5379
5380*** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
5381
5382*** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
5383
5384*** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
5385from alien sources.
5386
5387*** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5388to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5389crossref entries.
5390
5391*** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5392region.
5393
5394*** Added support for imenu.
5395
5396*** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5397of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5398`compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5399`next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5400
5401*** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5402from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5403
5404** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5405
5406** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5407functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5408Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5409as an argument.
5410
5411When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5412and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5413
5414** browse-url changes
5415
5416*** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5417Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5418(browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5419non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5420customization variables.
5421
5422*** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5423
5424*** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5425lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5426(e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5427
5428** Changes in Ediff
5429
5430*** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5431pops up the Info file for this command.
5432
5433*** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5434the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5435merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
5436directories).
5437
5438*** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
5439and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
5440files in the same directory.
5441
5442*** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
5443The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5444related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5445
5446** Changes in Viper
5447
5448*** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
79214ddf 5449*** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
a933dad1
DL
5450 instead of vip-.
5451*** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
79214ddf 5452*** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
a933dad1
DL
5453Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5454*** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5455*** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5456*** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5457color when Viper is in insert state.
5458*** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5459Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5460viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5461
5462** Etags changes.
5463
5464*** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5465default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5466Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5467variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5468not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5469
5470*** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5471
5472*** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5473constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5474
5475*** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5476recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5477In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5478
5479*** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5480C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5481recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5482methods and protocols.
5483
5484*** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5485.cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5486column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5487paragraph name.
5488
5489*** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5490an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5491at least M times and as many as N times.
5492
5493** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5494in files has changed slightly.
5495
5496With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5497time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5498This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5499with old time-stamp-format values.
5500
5501In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5502(`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5503This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5504reasons.
5505
5506In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5507natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5508fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5509(`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5510time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5511specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5512
5513Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5514case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5515truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5516
5517The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5518being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5519future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5520recommended now will continue to work then.
5521
5522See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5523details.
5524
5525** There are some additional major modes:
5526
5527dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5528m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5529meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5530
5531** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5532copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5533into Emacs.
5534
5535** New Lisp packages include:
5536
5537*** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5538
5539*** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5540be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5541
5542*** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5543
5544*** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5545in shell buffers.
5546
5547*** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5548See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5549and `elint-defun'.
5550
5551*** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5552meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5553ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5554strings or comments.
5555
5556These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5557abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5558you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5559insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5560at these points.
5561
5562*** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5563can visit them by short forms of their names.
5564
5565*** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5566Emacs Lisp function at point.
5567
5568*** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5569
5570*** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5571switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5572
5573*** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5574
5575*** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5576
5577*** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5578
5579*** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5580from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5581
5582*** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5583You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5584inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5585original place after inserting the copy.
5586
5587*** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5588on the buffer.
5589
5590You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5591velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5592(with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5593
5594Enable mouse-drag with:
5595 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
5596-or-
5597 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
5598
5599*** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
5600mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
5601
5602*** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
5603It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
5604
5605*** ogonek
5606
5607The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
5608Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
5609platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
5610TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
5611ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
5612prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
5613instance) and vice versa.
5614
5615To use this package load it using
5616 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
5617Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
79214ddf 5618 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
a933dad1
DL
5619 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
5620The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
5621ways of customization in `.emacs'.
5622
5623*** Interface to ph.
5624
5625Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
5626
5627The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
5628services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
5629these servers.
5630
5631*** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
5632
5633*** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
5634You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
5635while the real cursor does not move.
5636
5637*** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
5638for visiting your favorite web sites.
5639
5640*** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
5641so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
5642
5643** movemail change
5644
5645Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
5646mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
5647supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
5648user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
5649
5650This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
5651\f
5652* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
5653
5654** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
5655
5656Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
5657end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
5658Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
5659file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
5660file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
5661
5662To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
5663C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
5664coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
5665specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
5666LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
5667save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
5668\f
5669* Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
5670
5671** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
5672Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
5673vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
5674Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
5675
5676** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
5677to start with w32- instead of win32-.
5678
5679In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
5680don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
5681"win".
5682
5683** Basic Lisp changes
5684
5685*** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
5686evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
5687
5688*** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
5689be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
5690or by the user.
5691
5692The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
5693
5694*** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
5695
5696(when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
5697(unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
5698
5699*** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
5700usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
5701its argument.
5702
5703*** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
5704
5705*** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
5706
5707*** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
5708
5709*** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
5710error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
5711include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
5712`format' function.
5713
5714*** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
5715or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
5716whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
5717
5718*** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
5719either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
5720adding one of these suffixes.
5721
5722*** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
5723which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
79214ddf 5724If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
a933dad1
DL
5725
5726We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
5727because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
5728
5729*** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
5730
5731*** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
5732You must load the `cl' library to define it.
5733
5734*** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
5735conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
5736
5737 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
5738
5739BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
5740BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
5741
5742*** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
5743choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
5744restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
5745works using `save-current-buffer'.
5746
5747*** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
5748write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
5749of the last form.
5750
5751*** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
5752which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
5753last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
5754as the last form.
5755
5756*** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
5757characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
5758matches.
5759
5760For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
5761
5762*** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
5763with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
5764Then it returns that string.
5765
5766For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
5767
5768(with-output-to-string
5769 (princ "The buffer is ")
5770 (princ (buffer-name)))
5771
5772returns "The buffer is foo".
5773
5774** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
5775is non-nil.
5776
5777These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
5778buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
5779characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
5780
5781*** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
5782a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
5783
5784Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
5785character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
5786Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
5787position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
5788characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
5789 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
5790
5791ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
5792Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
5793non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
5794characters".
5795
5796The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
5797through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
5798"leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
5799range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
5800leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
5801
5802*** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
5803(forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
5804multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
5805character, which may be more than one buffer position.
5806
5807This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
5808always one buffer position, need to be changed.
5809
5810However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
79214ddf 5811
a933dad1
DL
5812*** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
5813because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
5814have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
5815the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
5816guaranteed.
5817
5818*** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
5819between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
5820character).
5821
5822When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
5823
5824 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
5825 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
5826 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
5827 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
5828 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
5829
5830*** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
5831
5832*** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
5833`length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
5834more than the number of characters.
5835
5836You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
5837it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
5838\xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
5839is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
5840follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
5841newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
5842
5843*** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
5844and returns a string containing those characters.
5845
5846*** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
5847(sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
5848counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
5849character, sref signals an error.
5850
5851*** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
5852in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
5853string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5854
5855*** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
5856in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
5857region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5858
5859*** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
5860the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
5861to a vector of the characters in it.
5862
5863*** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
5864of a string. You call it as follows:
5865
5866 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
5867
5868This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
5869STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
5870This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
5871Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
5872it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
5873
5874*** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
5875if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5876
5877*** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
5878if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5879
5880*** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
5881to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
5882not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
5883which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
5884
5885(truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
5886
5887This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
5888
5889The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
5890If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
5891are not included in the resulting value.
5892
5893The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
5894at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
5895WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
5896is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
5897
5898If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
5899place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
5900character extends across that column), then the padding character
5901PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
5902string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
5903column START-COLUMN.
5904
5905*** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
5906the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
5907necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
5908difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
5909changed text, before the change.
5910
5911*** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
5912sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
5913one character set for each script, not for each language.
5914
5915**** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
5916
5917**** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
5918
5919**** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
5920set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
5921
5922**** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
5923name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
5924which identify the character within that character set.
5925
5926**** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
5927byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
5928opposite of split-char.
5929
5930**** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
5931of all the characters between BEG and END.
5932
5933**** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
5934of all the characters in a string.
5935
5936*** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
5937and specifying coding systems.
5938
5939**** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
5940system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
5941of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
5942(Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
5943and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
5944as what to do about code conversion.)
5945
5946**** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
5947name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
5948
5949**** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5950for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5951except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
5952
5953Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5954which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
5955to match against a file name.
5956
5957VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5958a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5959decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5960to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5961systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5962specifies the coding system for encoding.
5963
5964If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5965or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5966
5967**** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
5968the coding system to use for network sockets.
5969
5970Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5971which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
5972either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
5973service names.
5974
5975VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5976a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5977decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5978to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5979systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5980specifies the coding system for encoding.
5981
5982If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5983or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5984
5985**** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5986for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5987except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
5988start the subprocess.
5989
5990**** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
5991systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
5992when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
5993(OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
5994to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
5995
5996**** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
5997coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
5998subprocess.
5999
6000It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
6001but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
6002start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
6003connection permanently or until overridden.
6004
6005The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
6006file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
6007network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
6008coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
6009It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
6010system for one operation at a time.
6011
6012**** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
6013files, subprocesses or network connections.
6014
6015**** The function process-coding-system tells you what
6016coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
6017The value is a cons cell,
6018 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
6019where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
6020the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
6021input to the subprocess.
6022
6023**** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
6024change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
6025
6026** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
6027customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
6028you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
6029
6030You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
6031variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
6032information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
6033legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
6034customization.
6035
6036Thus, instead of writing
6037
6038 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
6039 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
6040
6041you would now write this:
6042
6043 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
6044 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
6045 :type 'boolean
6046 :group foo)
6047
6048The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
6049two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
6050describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
6051for a description of them.
6052
6053The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
6054should belong to. You define a new group like this:
6055
6056 (defgroup ispell nil
6057 "Spell checking using Ispell."
6058 :group 'processes)
6059
6060The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
6061group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
6062but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
6063to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
6064second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
6065
6066Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
6067package should have just one group; a more complex package should
6068have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
6069package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
6070first-level subgroups.
6071
6072** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
6073
6074This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
6075separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
6076
6077** easy-mmode
6078
6079The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
6080developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
6081only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
6082predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
6083`easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
6084`easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
6085
6086** Text property changes
6087
6088*** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
6089text property.
6090
6091*** The new functions next-char-property-change and
6092previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
6093place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
6094functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
6095starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
6096
6097If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
6098LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
6099of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
6100position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
6101
6102*** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
6103value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
6104is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
6105
6106** Changes in invisibility features
6107
6108*** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
6109hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
6110is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
6111should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
6112would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
6113make the overlay visible.
6114
6115During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
6116invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
6117needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
6118which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
6119the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
6120t when it should hide it.
6121
6122*** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
6123
6124Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
79214ddf
FP
6125invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
6126and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
a933dad1 6127Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
79214ddf 6128manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
a933dad1
DL
6129Here is an example of how to do this:
6130
6131 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
79214ddf 6132 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
a933dad1 6133 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
79214ddf 6134 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
a933dad1
DL
6135
6136 ...
6137 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
6138
6139 ...
6140 ;; When done with the overlays:
6141 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
6142 ;; Or respectively:
6143 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
6144
6145** Changes in syntax parsing.
6146
6147*** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
6148`parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
6149obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
6150`parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
6151
6152If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
6153is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
6154used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
6155
6156When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
6157character in the buffer is calculated thus:
6158
6159 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
6160 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
6161
6162 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
6163 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
6164 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
6165
6166 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
6167 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
6168 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
6169 determine the syntax type of the character.
6170
6171 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
6172 of the current buffer.
6173
6174*** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
6175value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
6176for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
6177
6178*** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
6179and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
6180only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
6181character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
6182another character with the same code (unless quoted).
6183
6184These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
6185text property.
6186
6187*** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
6188arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
6189of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
6190
6191*** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
6192(and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
6193element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
6194nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
6195string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
6196
6197*** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
6198syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
6199`font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
6200
6201** Changes in face features
6202
6203*** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
6204if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
6205
6206*** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
6207of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
6208
6209*** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
6210set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
6211
6212*** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
6213set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
6214
6215*** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
6216by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
6217and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
6218the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
6219overlay property).
6220
6221This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
6222arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
6223
6224** Changes in file-handling functions
6225
6226*** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
6227directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
6228they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
6229is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
6230
6231This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
6232begins with ~.
6233
6234*** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
6235it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
6236
6237*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
6238the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
6239
6240*** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
6241as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
6242
6243*** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
6244character code conversion as well as other things.
6245
6246Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
6247(formerly it did not).
6248
6249*** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
6250environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
6251
6252*** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
6253instead of constant strings.
6254
6255*** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
6256to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
6257any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
6258
6259substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
6260in the same way as before.
6261
6262*** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
6263The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
6264which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
6265
6266*** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
6267error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
6268else, and returns nil.
6269
6270*** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
6271directory cannot be listed.
6272
6273** Changes in minibuffer input
6274
6275*** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
6276read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
6277additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
6278argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
6279ways:
6280
6281 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
6282 It is available through the history command M-n.
6283
6284*** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
6285read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
6286argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
6287minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
6288enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
6289
6290In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
6291argument in this way.
6292
6293*** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
6294from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
6295minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
6296
6297** Echo area features
6298
6299*** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
6300echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
6301minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
6302after the echo area is cleared.
6303
6304*** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
6305in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
6306
6307** Keyboard input features
6308
6309*** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
6310set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
6311
6312*** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
6313received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
6314by keyboard macros.
6315
6316** Frame-related changes
6317
6318*** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
6319creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
6320hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
6321
6322*** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
6323the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
6324has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
6325
6326*** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6327selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
6328value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
6329in the selected frame.
6330
6331*** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
6332is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
6333which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
6334
6335** X Windows features
6336
6337*** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
6338x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
6339x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
6340
6341*** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
6342The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
6343
6344*** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
6345MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
6346A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
6347
6348If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
6349it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
6350
6351** Subprocess features
6352
6353*** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
6354functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
6355automatically.
6356
6357*** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
6358and returns the output from the command as a string.
6359
6360*** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
6361and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
6362
6363** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
6364does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
6365
6366** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
6367at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
6368goes after the other menu items.
6369
6370** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
79214ddf 6371of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
a933dad1
DL
6372around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
6373are in use.
6374
6375The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
6376series of several changes--if that seems safe.
6377
6378Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
6379after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
6380form.
6381
6382** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
6383is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
6384but its hook is still run.
6385
6386** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6387for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6388
6389If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6390regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6391useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6392
6393This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6394are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6395filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6396warned.
6397
6398** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6399way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6400
6401** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6402integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6403functions like display-time.
6404
6405** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6406name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6407
6408** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6409can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6410is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6411
6412** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6413if there is an error in compilation.
6414
6415** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6416switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6417argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6418they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6419
6420** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6421Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6422the *scratch* buffer.
6423
6424** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6425The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6426where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6427e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6428
6429** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6430and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6431It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6432
6433** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6434using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6435variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
6436and compose-mail-other-frame.
6437
6438** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
6439can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
6440full name of the specified user will be returned.
6441
6442** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
6443of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6444where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6445in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6446option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6447files at all.
6448
6449** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6450and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6451width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6452the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6453
6454For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6455minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6456with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6457is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6458
6459** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6460
6461** imenu.el changes.
6462
6463You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
79214ddf 6464item from menu created by imenu.
a933dad1
DL
6465
6466An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6467#include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6468select one of those items.
6469\f
6470* Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6471\f
6472* Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6473
6474** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6475mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6476
6477** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6478use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6479Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6480\f
6481* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6482
6483** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6484To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6485
6486** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6487conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6488matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6489expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6490word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6491all caps.
6492
6493** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6494at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6495
6496When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6497does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6498as in previous Emacs versions.
6499
6500** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6501non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6502time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6503frames.
6504
6505** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6506if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6507This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6508Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6509accident.
6510
6511** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6512keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6513It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6514line and then executing the macro.
6515
6516This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6517
6518** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6519(something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6520characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6521characters.
6522
6523** Font Lock mode
6524
6525*** Font Lock support modes
6526
6527Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6528below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6529hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6530to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6531Font Lock mode is enabled.
6532
6533For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6534
6535 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6536
6537in your ~/.emacs.
6538
6539*** lazy-lock
6540
6541The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6542only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6543becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6544Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6545occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6546buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6547Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6548
6549To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6550
6551 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6552
6553To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6554
6555** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6556
6557*** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6558paren and key.
6559
6560*** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6561supported.
6562
6563** Gnus changes.
6564
6565Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6566commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6567significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6568previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6569
6570Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6571between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6572
79214ddf 6573*** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
a933dad1
DL
6574variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6575obsolete.
6576
6577*** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6578missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6579
6580 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6581
6582*** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6583
6584 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6585
6586*** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
79214ddf 6587referred.
a933dad1
DL
6588
6589*** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6590
6591 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6592
6593*** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
6594
6595 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
6596
6597*** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
79214ddf 6598buffers.
a933dad1
DL
6599
6600 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
6601
6602*** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
6603
6604 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
6605
6606*** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
6607
6608 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
6609
6610*** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
6611
6612 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
6613
6614*** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
6615is possible.
6616
6617 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
6618
6619*** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
6620groups of groups.
6621
6622*** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
6623
6624*** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
79214ddf 6625batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
a933dad1
DL
6626
6627*** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
6628
6629*** The Gnus cache is much faster.
6630
6631*** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
6632
6633 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
6634
6635*** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
6636expiration times.
6637
6638*** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
6639
6640*** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
6641process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
6642
6643*** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
6644articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
6645bound to keys on the `/' submap.
6646
6647*** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
6648articles with the `*' command.
6649
6650*** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
6651
6652*** Article headers can be buttonized.
6653
6654 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
6655
6656*** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
6657
79214ddf 6658*** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
a933dad1
DL
6659`nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
6660
6661*** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
79214ddf 6662buffer.
a933dad1
DL
6663
6664*** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
6665
6666*** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
6667
6668*** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
6669
6670 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
6671
79214ddf 6672*** Groups can be made permanently visible.
a933dad1
DL
6673
6674 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
6675
79214ddf 6676*** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
a933dad1
DL
6677
6678*** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
6679
79214ddf 6680*** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
a933dad1 6681
79214ddf 6682 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
a933dad1
DL
6683 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
6684
6685*** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
79214ddf 6686refetching.
a933dad1
DL
6687
6688 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
6689
6690*** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
6691buffer to allow easier treatment.
6692
6693*** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
6694
6695*** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
6696
6697 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
6698
6699*** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
79214ddf 6700articles.
a933dad1
DL
6701
6702 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
6703
79214ddf 6704*** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
a933dad1
DL
6705
6706*** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
6707cited text to hide is now customizable.
6708
6709 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
6710
6711*** Boring headers can be hidden.
6712
6713 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
6714
6715*** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
6716
6717*** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
6718
6719The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
6720in greater detail.
6721\f
6722* Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
6723
6724** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
6725second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
6726asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
6727exists.
6728
6729** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
6730as well as lists.
6731
6732** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
6733of a given keymap.
6734
6735** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
6736given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
6737keymap or nil.
6738
6739** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
6740an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
6741name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
6742menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
6743equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
6744alias.
6745\f
6746* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
6747
6748** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
6749
6750Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
6751This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
6752was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
6753far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
6754pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
6755
6756For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
6757you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
6758`http://www.vtw.org/'.
6759
6760** A note about C mode indentation customization.
6761
6762The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
6763do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
6764It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
6765much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
6766chapter of the manual for details.
6767
6768However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
6769customization variables take effect.
6770
6771** Marking with the mouse.
6772
6773When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
6774highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
6775using M-x transient-mark-mode.
6776
6777** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
6778
6779*** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
6780
6781*** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
6782to work on NT only and not on 95.)
6783
6784*** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
6785in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
6786you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
6787application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
6788applications, these problems are significant.
6789
6790If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
6791likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
6792However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
6793will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
6794other DOS application as a subprocess.
6795
6796Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
6797You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
6798
6799If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
6800subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
6801have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
6802Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
6803separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
6804Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
6805
6806** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
6807
6808This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
6809which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
6810minibuffer contains.
6811
6812** `title' frame parameter and resource.
6813
6814The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
6815It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
6816It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
6817affects just the displayed title of the frame.
6818
6819The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
6820it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
6821and also serves as the default for the displayed title
6822when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
6823
6824** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
6825enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
6826
6827** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
6828F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
6829Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
6830
6831If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
6832menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
6833something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
6834the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
6835
6836 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
6837
6838** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
6839to replace the characters it "deletes".
6840
6841** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
6842
6843** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
6844a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
6845select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
6846It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
6847immediately after the selected one.
6848
6849This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
6850made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
6851
6852** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
6853
6854Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
6855directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
6856If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
6857Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
6858recover-session.
6859
6860You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
6861auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
6862will not work.
6863
6864Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
6865normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
6866this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
6867bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
6868now that the bug is fixed.
6869
6870** Changes to Version Control (VC)
6871
6872There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
6873when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
6874Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
6875which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
6876
6877If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
6878telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
6879VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
6880the link is visited and a warning displayed.
6881
6882** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
6883Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
6884is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
6885
6886There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
6887Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
6888enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
6889The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
6890remain normal.
6891
6892** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
6893header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
6894
6895Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
6896known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
6897offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
6898Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
6899
6900Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
6901of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
6902a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
6903name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
6904documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
6905`mail-directory-stream'.)
6906
6907** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
6908skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
6909characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
6910with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
6911
6912Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
6913- to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
6914wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
6915
6916The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
6917less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
6918headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
6919Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
6920Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
6921fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
6922to a limitation in font-lock).
6923
6924External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
6925
6926** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
6927buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
6928buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
6929this example:
6930
6931 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
6932 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
6933
6934** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6935
6936*** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
6937
6938*** Font Lock mode is now supported.
6939
6940*** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
6941
6942*** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
6943entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
6944will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
6945isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
6946(bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
6947The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
6948
6949*** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
6950does the same job.
6951
6952*** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
6953"Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
6954
6955*** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
6956text.
6957
6958** Font Lock mode
6959
6960*** Global Font Lock mode
6961
6962Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
6963new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
6964font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
6965turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
6966on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
6967
6968For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
6969
6970 (global-font-lock-mode t)
6971
6972in your ~/.emacs.
6973
6974*** Local Refontification
6975
6976In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
6977However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
6978those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
6979command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
6980
6981In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
6982(The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
6983current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
6984above and below point.
6985
6986With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
6987
6988** Follow mode
6989
6990Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
6991buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
6992side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
6993they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
6994split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
6995follow-mode.
6996
6997M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
6998
6999To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
7000command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
7001
7002** hide-show changes.
7003
7004The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
7005to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
7006normal hooks.
7007
7008** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
7009The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
7010
7011** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
7012recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
7013those that begin a function, record, or macro.
7014
7015** MSDOS Changes
7016
7017*** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
7018Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
7019
7020*** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
7021and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
7022
7023*** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
7024
7025*** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
7026pressing both mouse buttons.
7027
7028*** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
7029restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
79214ddf 7030are:
a933dad1
DL
7031
7032**** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
7033now works.
7034
7035**** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
7036
7037**** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
7038implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
7039
7040**** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
7041
7042**** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
7043
7044**** `M-x recover-session' works.
7045
7046**** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
7047
7048**** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
7049\f
7050* Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
7051
7052** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
7053tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
7054remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
7055this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
7056behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
7057
7058** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
7059
7060The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
7061not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
7062need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
7063be different.
7064
7065It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
7066than `system-type'.
7067
7068See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
7069
7070** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
7071now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
7072
7073** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
7074that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
7075
7076** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
7077no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
7078reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
7079
7080The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
7081to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
7082like this:
7083
7084 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7085
7086SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
7087It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
7088becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
7089
7090REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
7091seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
7092means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
7093
7094*** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
7095up if too much time passes.
7096
7097 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
7098
7099This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
7100If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
7101of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
7102form in BODY.
7103
7104*** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
7105a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
7106call looks like this:
7107
7108 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7109
7110SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
7111runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
7112timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
7113ARGS.
7114
7115Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
7116command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
7117command.
7118
7119REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
7120time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
7121does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
7122each time Emacs becomes idle.
7123
7124If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
7125idle for SECS seconds.
7126
7127*** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
7128all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
7129programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
7130instead.
7131
7132*** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
7133there is no answer within a certain time.
7134
7135 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
7136
7137asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
7138within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
7139Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
7140
7141** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
7142arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
7143meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
7144arguments in between are ignored.
7145
7146This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
7147the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
7148
7149** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
7150/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
7151/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
7152site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
7153version.
7154
7155It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
7156version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
7157for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
7158has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
7159and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
7160problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
7161
7162** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
7163.abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
7164systems with limited file name syntax.
7165
7166Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
7167convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
7168for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
7169completions.el:
7170
7171(defvar save-completions-file-name
7172 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
7173 "*The filename to save completions to.")
7174
7175This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
7176depends on the operating system, because the definition of
7177convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
7178Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
7179MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
7180
7181** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
7182rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
7183minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
7184
7185** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
7186marker from its buffer position.
7187
7188** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
7189Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
7190The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
7191
7192** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
7193that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
7194condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
7195of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
7196matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
7197regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
7198
7199This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
7200errors that happen often during editing.
7201
7202** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
7203into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
7204puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
7205
7206** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
7207now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
7208
7209** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
7210a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
7211name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
7212to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
7213and not get-buffer-window.
7214
7215** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
7216calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
7217being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
7218
7219If you use this feature, you should set the variable
7220buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
7221property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
7222non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
7223are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
7224property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
7225over and over for the same text.
7226
7227** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
7228
7229*** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
7230in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
7231
7232;; @(#) HEADER: text
7233;; $HEADER: text $
7234
7235in addition to the normal
7236
7237;; HEADER: text
7238
7239*** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
7240checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
7241lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
7242\f
7243* For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7244
7245----------------------------------------------------------------------
7246Copyright information:
7247
7248Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7249
7250 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7251 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7252 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7253 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7254
7255 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7256 of this document, or of portions of it,
7257 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7258 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7259\f
7260Local variables:
7261mode: outline
7262paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
7263end: