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1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
2
3Copyright (C) 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
7If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
8
9This file is about changes in Emacs version 23.
10
11See files NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18, and NEWS.1-17
12for changes in older Emacs versions.
13
14You can narrow news to a specific version by calling `view-emacs-news'
15with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.
16
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18* Installation Changes in Emacs 23.3
19
20* Startup Changes in Emacs 23.3
21
22* Changes in Emacs 23.3
23
24\f
25* Editing Changes in Emacs 23.3
26
27\f
28* Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.3
29
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30---
31** The appt-add command takes an optional argument for the warning time.
32This can be used in place of the default appt-message-warning-time.
33
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34\f
35* New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.3
36
37\f
38* Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.3
39
40\f
41* Lisp changes in Emacs 23.3
42
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43** The use of unintern without an obarray arg is declared obsolete.
44
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45** New function byte-to-string, like char-to-string but for bytes.
46
47\f
48* Changes in Emacs 23.3 on non-free operating systems
49
50\f
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51* Installation Changes in Emacs 23.2
52
0235128c 53** New configure options for Emacs developers.
eb199145 54These are not new features; only the configure flags are new.
0235128c 55
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56*** --enable-profiling builds Emacs with profiling enabled.
57This might not work on all platforms.
0235128c 58
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59*** --enable-checking[=OPTIONS] builds emacs with extra runtime checks.
60
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61** `make install' now consistently ignores umask, creating a
62world-readable install.
63
64** Emacs compiles with Gconf support, if it is detected.
65Use the configure option --without-gconf to disable this.
6e104790 66This is used by the `font-use-system-font' feature (see below).
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67
68* Startup Changes in Emacs 23.2
0235128c 69
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70** The command-line option -Q (--quick) also inhibits loading X resources.
71However, if Emacs is compiled with the Lucid or Motif toolkit, X
72resource settings for the graphical widgets are still applied.
73On Windows, the -Q option causes Emacs to ignore Registry settings,
74but environment variables set on the Registry are still honored.
0235128c 75
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76*** The new variable `inhibit-x-resources' shows whether X resources
77were loaded.
78
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79** New command-line option -mm (--maximized) maximizes the initial frame.
80
81* Changes in Emacs 23.2
82
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83** The maximum size of buffers (and the largest fixnum) is doubled.
84On typical 32bit systems, buffers can now be up to 512MB.
85
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86** The default value of `trash-directory' is now nil.
87This means that `move-file-to-trash' trashes files according to
88freedesktop.org specifications, the same method used by the Gnome,
89KDE, and XFCE desktops. (This change has no effect on Windows, which
90uses `system-move-file-to-trash' for trashing.)
91
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92** The pointer now becomes invisible when typing.
93Customize `make-pointer-invisible' to disable this feature.
94
95** Font changes
0235128c 96
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97*** Emacs can use the system default monospaced font in Gnome.
98To enable this feature, set `font-use-system-font' to non-nil (it is
99nil by default). If the system default changes, Emacs changes also.
100This feature requires Gconf support, which is automatically included
101at compile-time if configure detects the gconf libraries (you can
102disable this with the configure option --without-gconf).
0235128c 103
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104*** On X11, Emacs reacts to Xft changes made by configuration tools,
105via the XSETTINGS mechanism. This includes antialias, hinting,
106hintstyle, RGBA, DPI and lcdfilter changes.
107
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108** Killing a buffer with a running process now asks for confirmation.
109To remove this query, remove `process-kill-buffer-query-function' from
110`kill-buffer-query-functions', or set the appropriate process flag
111with `set-process-query-on-exit-flag'.
112
113** File-local variable changes
0235128c 114
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115*** Specifying a minor mode as a local variables enables that mode,
116unconditionally. The previous behavior, toggling the mode, was
117neither reliable nor generally desirable.
118
6e104790 119*** There are new commands for adding and removing file-local variables:
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120`add-file-local-variable', `delete-file-local-variable',
121`add-file-local-variable-prop-line', and
122`delete-file-local-variable-prop-line'.
123
6e104790 124*** There are new commands for adding and removing directory-local variables,
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125and copying them to and from file-local variable lists:
126`add-dir-local-variable', `delete-dir-local-variable',
127`copy-dir-locals-to-file-locals',
128`copy-dir-locals-to-file-locals-prop-line' and
129`copy-file-locals-to-dir-locals'.
130
131** Internationalization changes
0235128c 132
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133*** Unibyte sessions are now considered obsolete.
134This refers to the EMACS_UNIBYTE environment variable as well as the
135--unibyte, --multibyte, --no-multibyte, and --no-unibyte command line
136arguments. Customizing enable-multibyte-characters and setting
137default-enable-multibyte-characters are also deprecated.
0235128c 138
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139*** New coding system `utf-8-hfs'.
140This is suitable for default-file-name-coding-system on Mac OS X; see
141international/ucs-normalize.el.
142
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143** Function arguments in *Help* buffers are now shown in upper-case.
144Customize `help-downcase-arguments' to t to show them in lower-case.
145
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146** New command `async-shell-command', bound globally to `M-&'.
147This executes the command asynchronously, similar to calling `M-!' and
148manually adding an ampersand to the end of the command. With `M-&',
149you don't need the ampersand. The output appears in the buffer
150`*Async Shell Command*'.
151
152** When running in a new enough xterm (newer than version 242), Emacs
153asks xterm what the background color is and it sets up faces
154accordingly for a dark background if needed (the current default is to
155consider the background light).
156
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157\f
158* Editing Changes in Emacs 23.2
159
160** Kill-ring and selection changes
0235128c 161
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162*** If `select-active-regions' is t, any active region automatically
163becomes the primary selection (for interaction with other window
164applications). If you enable this, you might want to bind
165`mouse-yank-primary' to Mouse-2.
0235128c 166
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167*** When `save-interprogram-paste-before-kill' is non-nil, the kill
168commands save the interprogram-paste selection into the kill ring
169before doing anything else. This avoids losing the selection.
0235128c 170
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171*** When `kill-do-not-save-duplicates' is non-nil, identical
172subsequent kills are not duplicated in the `kill-ring'.
173
174** Completion changes
175
176*** The new command `completion-at-point' provides mode-sensitive completion.
0235128c 177
eb199145 178*** tab-always-indent set to `complete' lets TAB do completion as well.
0235128c 179
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180*** The new completion-style `initials' is available.
181For instance, this can complete M-x lch to list-command-history.
0235128c 182
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183*** The new variable `completions-format' determines how completions
184are displayed in the *Completions* buffer. If you set it to
185`vertical', completions are sorted vertically in columns.
186
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187** The default value of `blink-matching-paren-distance' is increased.
188
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189** M-n provides more default values in the minibuffer for commands
190that read file names. These include the file name at point (when ffap
191is loaded without ffap-bindings), the file name on the current line
192(in Dired buffers), and the directory names of adjacent Dired windows
193(for Dired commands that operate on several directories, such as copy,
194rename, or diff).
195
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196** M-r is bound to the new `move-to-window-line-top-bottom'.
197This moves point to the window center, top and bottom on successive
198invocations, in the same spirit as the C-l (recenter-top-bottom)
199command.
200
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201** The new variable `recenter-positions' determines the default
202cycling order of C-l (`recenter-top-bottom').
203
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204** The abbrevs file is now a file named abbrev_defs in
205user-emacs-directory; but the old location, ~/.abbrev_defs, is used if
206that file exists.
0235128c 207
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208\f
209* Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.2
210
211** The bookmark menu has a narrowing search via bookmark-bmenu-search.
212
eb199145 213** Calc
0235128c 214
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215*** The Calc settings file is now a file named calc.el in
216user-emacs-directory; but the old location, ~/.calc.el, is used if
217that file exists.
0235128c 218
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219*** Graphing commands (`g f' etc.) now work on MS-Windows, if you have
220the native Windows port of Gnuplot version 3.8 or later installed.
221
222** Calendar and diary
0235128c 223
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224*** Fancy diary display is now the default.
225If you prefer the simple display, customize `diary-display-function'.
0235128c 226
eb199145 227*** The diary's fancy display now enables view-mode.
0235128c 228
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229*** The command `calendar-current-date' accepts an optional argument
230giving an offset from today.
231
232** Desktop
0235128c 233
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234*** The default value for `desktop-buffers-not-to-save' is nil.
235This means Desktop will try restoring all buffers, when you restart
236your Emacs session. Also, `desktop-buffers-not-to-save' is only
237effective for buffers that have no associated file. If you want to
238exempt buffers that do correspond to files, customize the value of
239`desktop-files-not-to-save' instead.
240
241** Dired
0235128c 242
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243*** The new variable `dired-auto-revert-buffer', if non-nil, causes
244Dired buffers to be reverted automatically on revisiting them.
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245
246** DocView
0235128c 247
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248*** When `doc-view-continuous' is non-nil, scrolling a line
249on the page edge advances to the next/previous page.
250
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251** Elint
252
253*** Elint now uses compilation-mode.
254
255*** Elint can now scan individual files and whole directories,
256and can be run in batch mode.
257
258*** Elint does a more thorough initialization, and recognizes more built-in
259functions and variables. Customize `elint-scan-preloaded' if you want
260to sacrifice some accuracy for a faster startup.
261
262*** Elint attempts some basic understanding of featurep and (f)boundp tests.
263
264*** Customize `elint-ignored-warnings' to suppress some warnings.
265
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266** GDB-UI
267
268*** Toolbar functionality for reverse debugging. Display of STL
6e104790 269collections as watch expressions. These features require GDB 7.0 or later.
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270
271** Grep
0235128c 272
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273*** A new command `zrgrep' searches recursively in gzipped files.
274
275** Info
276
277*** The new command `Info-virtual-index' bound to "I" displays a menu of
278matched topics found in the index.
279
280*** The new command `info-finder' replaces finder.el with a virtual Info
281manual that generates an Info file which gives the same information
282through a menu structure.
283
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284** LaTeX mode now provides completion (via completion-at-point).
285
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286** Message mode is now the default mode for composing mail.
287
288The default for `mail-user-agent' is now message-user-agent, so the
289C-x m (`compose-mail') command uses Message mode instead of Mail mode.
290
291Message mode has been included in Emacs, as part of the Gnus package,
292for several years. It provides several features that are absent in
293Mail mode, such as MIME handling.
294
295*** If the user has not customized mail-user-agent, `compose-mail'
296checks for Mail mode customizations, and issues a warning if these
297customizations are found. This alerts users who may otherwise be
298unaware that their mail configuration has changed.
299
300To disable this check, set compose-mail-user-agent-warnings to nil.
301
302** The default value of mail-interactive is t, since Emacs 23.1.
303(This was not announced at the time.) It means that when sending mail,
304Emacs will wait for the process sending mail to return. If you
305experience delays when sending mail, you may wish to set this to nil.
306
307** nXML mode is now the default for editing XML files.
308
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309** pcomplete provides a new command `pcomplete-std-completion' which
310is similar to `pcomplete' but using the standard completion UI code.
311
85738751 312** Shell (and other comint modes)
0235128c 313
85738751 314*** M-s is no longer bound to `comint-next-matching-input'.
0235128c 315
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316*** M-r is now bound to `comint-history-isearch-backward-regexp'.
317This starts an incremental search of the comint/shell input history.
0235128c 318
85738751 319*** ansi-color is now enabled by default in Shell mode.
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320To disable it, set ansi-color-for-comint-mode to nil.
321
eb199145 322** Tramp
0235128c 323
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324*** New connection methods "rsyncc", "imap" and "imaps".
325On systems which support GVFS-Fuse, Tramp offers also the new
326connection methods "dav", "davs", "obex" and "synce".
327
328** VC and related modes
0235128c 329
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330*** When using C-x v v or C-x v i on a unregistered file that is in a
331directory not controlled by any VCS, ask the user what VC backend to
332use to create a repository, create a new repository and register the
333file.
0235128c 334
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335*** New command `vc-root-print-log', bound to `C-x v L'.
336This displays a `*vc-change-log*' buffer showing the history of the
337version-controlled directory tree as a whole.
0235128c 338
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339*** New command `vc-root-diff', bound to `C-x v D'.
340This is similar to `vc-diff', but compares the entire directory tree
341of the current VC directory with its working revision.
0235128c 342
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343*** `C-x v l' and `C-x v L' do not show the full log by default.
344The number of entries shown can be chosen interactively with a prefix
345argument, or by customizing vc-log-show-limit. The `*vc-change-log*'
346buffer now contains buttons at the end of the buffer, which can be
347used to increase the number of entries shown. RCS, SCCS, and CVS do
348not support this feature.
0235128c 349
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350*** vc-annotate supports annotations through file copies and renames,
351it displays the old names for the files and it can show logs/diffs for
352the corresponding lines. Currently only Git and Mercurial take
353advantage of this feature.
0235128c 354
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355*** The log command in vc-annotate can display a single log entry
356instead of redisplaying the full log. The RCS, CVS and SCCS VC
357backends do not support this.
0235128c 358
eb199145 359*** When a file is not found, VC will not try to check it out of RCS anymore.
0235128c 360
85738751 361*** Diff and log operations can be used from Dired buffers.
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362
363*** vc-git changes
364
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365**** The short log format for git makes use of the graph display,
366so it's not supported on git versions earlier than 1.5.6.
eb199145 367
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368**** vc-dir uses the --relative option of git, and so requires at least
369git version 1.5.5.
eb199145 370
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371**** Support for operating with stashes has been added to vc-dir:
372the stash list is displayed in the *vc-dir* header, stashes can be
373created, removed, applied and their content displayed.
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374
375*** vc-bzr supports operating with shelves: the shelve list is
376displayed in the *vc-dir* header, shelves can be created, removed and applied.
0235128c 377
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378*** log-edit-strip-single-file-name controls whether or not single filenames
379are stripped when copying text from the ChangeLog to the *VC-Log* buffer.
380
eb199145 381** Miscellaneous
0235128c 382
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383*** Interactively `multi-isearch-buffers' and `multi-isearch-buffers-regexp'
384read buffer names to search, one by one, ended with RET. With a prefix
385argument, they ask for a regexp, and search in buffers whose names match
386the specified regexp. Interactively `multi-isearch-files' and
387`multi-isearch-files-regexp' read file names to search, one by one,
388ended with RET. With a prefix argument, they ask for a wildcard, and
389search in file buffers whose file names match the specified wildcard.
0235128c 390
eb199145 391*** Autorevert Tail mode now works also for remote files.
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392
393*** The new eshell built-in commands `su' and `sudo' support Tramp.
394Thus, they change `default-directory' to reflect the new user id, and
395let commands run under that user's permissions. This works even when
eb199145 396`default-directory' is already remote. Calling the external commands
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397is possible via `*su' or `*sudo', respectively.
398
399** Obsolete packages
400
401*** sym-comp.el is now obsolete, superseded by completion-at-point.
402
403*** lucid.el and levents.el are now obsolete.
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404
405\f
406* New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.2
407
408** CEDET (the Collection of Emacs Development Tools) is now in Emacs.
409This is a collection of packages to aid with using Emacs as an IDE
410(integrated development environment):
411
412*** The Semantic package allows the use of parsers to intelligently
413edit and navigate source code. Parsers for C/C++, Java, Javascript,
414and several other languages are included by default, and Semantic can
415also interface with external tools such as GNU Global and GNU Idutils.
416
417To enable Semantic, use the global minor mode `semantic-mode'.
418See the Semantic manual for details.
419
420*** EDE (Emacs Development Environment) is a package for managing code
421projects, including features such as automatic Makefile generation.
422
423To enable EDE, use the minor mode `global-ede-mode'.
424See the EDE manual for details.
425
426*** SRecode is a library for recoding Semantic tags back into source
427code. It is currently used by some parts of Semantic and EDE; in the
428future, it may be used for code generation features.
429
430*** The EIEIO library implements a subset of the Common Lisp Object
431System (CLOS). It is used by the other CEDET packages.
432
433** mpc.el is a front end for the Music Player Daemon. Run it with M-x mpc.
434
435** htmlfontify.el turns a fontified Emacs buffer into an HTML page.
436
437** js.el is a new major mode for JavaScript files.
438
439** imap-hash.el is a new library to address IMAP mailboxes as hashtables.
440
441\f
442* Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.2
443
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444** The Lisp reader turns integers that are too large/small into floats.
445For instance, on machines where `536870911' is the largest integer,
446reading `536870912' gives the floating-point object `536870912.0'.
447
448This change only concerns the Lisp reader; it does not affect how
449actual integer objects overflow.
450
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451** Several obsolete functions removed.
452The functions have been obsolete since Emacs 19, and are unlikely to
453be in use:
454
455 time-stamp-month-dd-yyyy, time-stamp-dd/mm/yyyy, time-stamp-mon-dd-yyyy
456 time-stamp-dd-mon-yy, time-stamp-yy/mm/dd, time-stamp-yyyy/mm/dd,
457 time-stamp-yyyy-mm-dd, time-stamp-yymmdd, time-stamp-hh:mm:ss,
458 time-stamp-hhmm, baud-rate
459
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460** Support for generating Emacs 18 compatible bytecode (by setting
461the variable `byte-compile-compatibility') has been removed.
462
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463** In image-mode.el `image-mode-maybe' is obsolete.
464Instead, you can either use `image-mode' (which displays an image file
465as the actual image initially), or `image-mode-as-text' (when you want
466to display an image file as text initially). `image-mode-as-text' is a
467combination of a non-image mode from `auto-mode-alist' (or Fundamental
468mode) and `image-minor-mode'. `image-minor-mode' provides a `C-c C-c'
469key binding to toggle image display.
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470`image-toggle-display-text' removes image properties.
471`image-toggle-display-image' adds image properties.
6e104790 472`image-toggle-display' toggles between `image-mode-as-text' and `image-mode'.
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473
474\f
475* Lisp changes in Emacs 23.2
0235128c 476
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477** All the default-FOO variables that hold the default value of the FOO
478variable, are now declared obsolete.
eb199145 479
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480** read-key is a function halfway between read-event and read-key-sequence.
481It reads a single key, but obeys input and escape sequence decoding.
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482
483** Frame parameter changes
0235128c 484
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485*** You can give the `fullscreen' frame parameter the value `maximized'.
486This maximizes the frame.
0235128c 487
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488*** The new frame parameter `sticky' makes Emacs frames sticky in
489virtual desktops.
490
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491** Completion changes
492
493*** completion-base-size is obsoleted by completion-base-position.
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494This change causes a few backward incompatibilities, mostly with
495choose-completion-string-functions where the `mini-p' argument has
496been replaced by a `base-position' argument, and where the `base-size'
497argument is now always nil.
498
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499*** New function `completion-in-region' to use the standard completion
500facilities on a particular region of text.
0235128c 501
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502*** The 4th arg to all-completions (aka hide-spaces) is declared obsolete.
503
504*** completion-annotate-function specifies how to compute annotations
505for completions displayed in *Completions*.
506
507** Minibuffer changes
0235128c 508
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509*** read-file-name-predicate is obsolete. It was used to pass the predicate
510to read-file-name-internal because read-file-name-internal abused its `pred'
511argument to pass the current directory, but this hack is not needed
512any more.
513
514** Changes to file-manipulation functions
0235128c 515
e867cb5d 516*** `delete-directory' has an optional parameter RECURSIVE.
0235128c 517
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518*** New function `copy-directory', which copies a directory recursively.
519
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520** called-interactively-p now takes one argument and replaces interactive-p
521which is now marked obsolete.
e867cb5d 522
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523** New function set-advertised-calling-convention makes it possible
524to obsolete arguments as well as make some arguments mandatory.
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525
526** You can control which binding is preferentially shown in menus and
527docstrings by adding a `:advertised-binding' property to the corresponding
528command's symbol. That property can hold a single binding or a list
529of bindings.
530
e867cb5d 531** Network and process changes
0235128c 532
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533*** start-process-shell-command and start-file-process-shell-command
534now only take a single `command' argument.
0235128c 535
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536*** The new variable `process-file-side-effects' should be set to nil
537if a `process-file' call does not change a remote file. This allows
538file name handlers such as Tramp to optimizations.
0235128c 539
e867cb5d 540*** make-network-process can now also create `seqpacket' Unix sockets.
eb199145 541
e867cb5d 542** Loading changes
0235128c 543
e867cb5d 544*** eval-next-after-load is obsolete.
0235128c 545
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546*** New hook `after-load-functions' run after loading an Elisp file.
547
548** Byte compilation changes
0235128c 549
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550*** Changing the file-names generated by byte-compilation by redefining
551the function `byte-compile-dest-file' before loading bytecomp.el is obsolete.
552Instead, customize byte-compile-dest-file-function.
0235128c 553
e867cb5d 554*** `byte-compile-warnings' has new members, `constants' and `suspicious'.
eb199145 555
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556** New macro with-silent-modifications to tweak text properties without
557affecting the buffer's modification state.
eb199145 558
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559** Hash tables have a new printed representation that is readable.
560The feature `hashtable-print-readable' identifies this new
561functionality.
562
e867cb5d 563** New functions for performing Unicode normalization:
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GM
564ucs-normalize-NFD-region, ucs-normalize-NFD-string,
565ucs-normalize-NFC-region, ucs-normalize-NFC-string,
566ucs-normalize-NFKD-region, ucs-normalize-NFKD-string,
567ucs-normalize-NFKC-region, ucs-normalize-NFKC-string,
568ucs-normalize-HFS-NFD-region, ucs-normalize-HFS-NFD-string,
569ucs-normalize-HFS-NFC-region, ucs-normalize-HFS-NFC-string.
570
eb199145
GM
571** Face aliases can now be marked as obsolete, using the macro
572`define-obsolete-face-alias'.
573
eb199145
GM
574** New function `window-full-height-p', analogous to the full-width version.
575
576\f
577* Changes in Emacs 23.2 on non-free operating systems
578
eb199145
GM
579** On MS-Windows, `display-time' now displays the system load average
580as well as the time, as it does on GNU and Unix.
581
582\f
583* Installation Changes in Emacs 23.1
584
585** The default X toolkit is now Gtk+, rather than Lucid.
586The configure option `--with-gtk' has been removed. Gtk is now the
587default toolkit, but you can use --with-x-toolkit=gtk if necessary.
588
589** New font code.
590Fonts are handled by new code capable of dealing with multiple font
591backends. This uses the freetype and fontconfig libraries.
592
593*** Emacs now accepts font names supplied in the fontconfig format
594(e.g. "monospace-12:bold") and GTK format (e.g. "Monospace Bold 12").
595
596*** Added support for local fonts (fonts installed on the machine
597where Emacs is running).
598
599*** Added support for the Xft library for antialiasing.
600
601*** Added support for the otf library for complex text layout by
602OpenType fonts.
603
604*** Added support for the m17n library for text shaping.
605
606** Changes to image support
607
608*** configure now checks for libgif before libungif when searching for
609a GIF library.
610
611*** Emacs now supports the SVG image format through librsvg2.
612
613*** Emacs now supports multi-page TIFF images.
614
615** New NeXTSTEP-based port.
616This provides support for GNUstep (via the GNUstep libraries) and Mac
617OS X (via the Cocoa libraries).
618
619Specify --with-ns to configure for this. By default, a self-contained
620app will be built (containing all lisp). To install/share lisp with
621other emacsen (e.g. X11 build) use --disable-ns-self-contained. See
622nextstep/README and nextstep/INSTALL in the Emacs source directory.
623
624** Mac OS X is no longer supported via Carbon.
625Use the NeXTSTEP port, described above.
626
627** The new configuration option "--with-dbus" enables D-Bus language
628bindings for Emacs.
629
630** Support for many obsolete platforms has been removed.
631See the list at the end of etc/MACHINES for details.
632
633*** Support for systems without alloca has been removed.
634
635*** Support for Sun windows has been removed.
636
637*** The `emacstool' utility has been removed.
638
639** The following platforms will be removed in a future Emacs version:
640If you are still using Emacs on one of these platforms, please email
641emacs-devel@gnu.org to inform the Emacs developers.
642
643*** Old GNU/Linux systems based on libc version 5.
644
645*** Old FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD systems based on the COFF
646executable format.
647
648*** Solaris versions 2.6 and below.
649
650*** Solaris on IBM RS6000 machines.
651
652*** UNIX System V (the original SysV, not later platforms based on it).
653
654*** Unixware on non-x86 machines.
655
656*** Platforms not supporting shared libraries (i.e., requiring the
657NO_SHARED_LIBS compilation flag).
658
659** The configure options `--with-gcc', `--without-gcc' have been removed.
660Configure will use gcc by default. Set the CC environment variable if
661you need control over which C compiler is used.
662
663** The refcards are now shipped as PDF files.
664
665** The manuals are now licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License v1.3,
666or any later version.
667
668** Emacs 23 comes with a new set of default icons.
669Various resolutions are available as etc/images/icons/hicolor/*/apps/emacs.png.
670The Emacs 22 icon is available as `emacs22.png' in the same location.
671\f
672* Changes in Emacs 23.1
673
674** Improved X Window System support
675
676*** Emacs now supports using both X displays and ttys in one session.
677With an Emacs server active (M-x server-start), `emacsclient -t'
678creates a tty frame connected to the running emacs server. You can
679use any number of different ttys. `emacsclient -c' creates a new X11
680frame on the current $DISPLAY (or a tty frame if $DISPLAY is not set).
681There may be problems if a display exits unexpectedly and Emacs is compiled
682with Gtk+, see etc/PROBLEMS.
683
684You can test for the presence of this feature in your Lisp code by
685testing for the `multi-tty' feature.
686
687*** Emacs starts in the background, as a daemon, when given the
688--daemon command line argument. It disconnects from the terminal and
689starts the server. Clients can connect and create graphical or
690terminal frames using emacsclient.
691
692**** emacsclient starts emacs in daemon mode and connects to it when
693--alternate-editor="" is used (or when the evironment variable
694ALTERNATE_EDITOR is set to "") and emacsclient cannot connect to an
695emacs server.
696
697*** The new command close-display-connection closes a connection to a
698remote display. There are some bugs for Gtk+. See etc/PROBLEMS.
699
700*** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
701You can embed Emacs in another application on X11. The new command line
702option --parent-id is used to pass the parent window id to Emacs. See
703http://standards.freedesktop.org/xembed-spec/xembed-spec-latest.html
704for details about XEmbed.
705
706*** Emacs can now set the frame opacity.
707The opacity of a frame can be controlled by setting the `alpha' frame
708parameter. This only takes effect on a compositing window manager for
709the X Window System, such as Compiz, Beryl and Compiz Fusion, on Mac
710OS X, or on Windows 2000 and later versions of Windows.
711
712The alpha parameter should be an integer between 0 (transparent) and
713100 (opaque), or a float number between 0.0 and 1.0. It can also be a
714cons cell (ACTIVE . INACTIVE), where ACTIVE is the opacity of an
715active frame and INACTIVE is the opacity of non-active frames.
716
717The variable `frame-alpha-lower-limit' defines a lower bound for the
718opacity; the default is 20.
719
720** Internationalization changes
721
722*** The Emacs character set is now a superset of Unicode.
723(It has about four times the code space, which should be plenty).
724
725The internal encoding used for buffers and strings is now
726Unicode-based and called `utf-8-emacs' (`emacs-internal' is an alias
727for this). This encoding is backward-compatible with Unicode's UTF-8
728encoding. The internal encoding previously used by Emacs,
729`emacs-mule', is still available for reading and writing files.
730
731During byte-compilation, Emacs 23 uses `utf-8-emacs' to write files.
732As a result, byte-compiled files containing non-ASCII characters can't
733be read by earlier versions of Emacs. Files compiled by Emacs 20, 21,
734or 22 are loaded correctly as `emacs-mule' (whether or not they
735contain multibyte characters). This takes somewhat more time, so it
736may be worth recompiling existing .elc files which don't need to be
737shared with older Emacsen.
738
739*** There are new coding systems/aliases; see M-x list-coding-systems.
740
741*** There is a new charset implementation with many new charsets.
742See M-x list-character-sets. New charsets can be defined conveniently
743as tables of unicodes.
744
745*** There are new language environments for Chinese-GBK,
746Chinese-GB18030, Khmer, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu,
747Sinhala, and TaiViet.
748
749*** The minor modes unify-8859-on-encoding-mode and
750unify-8859-on-decoding-mode are obsolete.
751
752*** `ucs-insert' is bound to `C-x 8 RET' and in addition to hex numbers
753accepts numbers in hash notation (e.g. #o21430 for octal, or #10r8984 for
754decimal). It also accepts Unicode character names with completion.
755
756*** The `cyrillic-translit' input method supports many new characters.
757Common typographical characters available from Unicode were added to
758`cyrillic-translit': punctuation marks, accented characters, fractions,
759and others.
760
761** Emacs now supports serial port access on GNU/Linux, Unix, and
762Windows. The new command `serial-term' starts an interactive terminal
763on a serial port. The serial port can be configured at runtime with
764the mode-line mouse menu.
765
766** Menu Bar changes
767
768*** In the Options menu, the "Set Default Font" item applies the
769selected font to the `default' face on all frames, not just the
770current frame. Furthermore, if Emacs is compiled with both GTK and
771Fontconfig support, the "Set Default Font" item uses the GTK font
772selection dialog instead of an Emacs pop-up menu.
773
774*** The font setting chosen by "Set Default Font" is saved if the
775"Save Options" item is used.
776
777*** The Tools menu contains a new Encryption/Decryption submenu.
778This contains commands provided by EasyPG, the newly-included
779interface to GnuPG (see New Modes and Packages).
780
781*** In the Options menu, the "Truncate Long Lines in the Buffer" entry
782has been replaced with a submenu offering three different ways to
783handle long lines: truncation, continuation at the window edge, and
784the new word wrapping behavior (see Editing Changes, below).
785
786*** Improvements to menus for major and minor modes
787More major and minor modes now have a mode specific menu, and existing
788mode menus have been improved to include more functionality.
789
790** Mode-line changes
791
792*** The mode-line displays a `@', instead of `-', if the
793default-directory for the current buffer is on a remote machine.
794
795*** The mode-line displays a mode menu when mouse-1 is clicked on a
796minor mode, in the same way as it already did for major modes.
797
798*** The `mode-line-emphasis' face is used to highlight certain
799mode-line information (e.g. waiting for a VC command to finish).
800
801*** The mode-line tooltips have been improved to provide more details.
802
803*** The VC, line/colum number and minor mode indicators on the mode
804line are now interactive: mouse-1 can be used on them to pop up a menu.
805
806** File deletion can make use of the Recycle Bin or system Trash folder.
807Set `delete-by-moving-to-trash' non-nil to use this. Deleted files
808and directories will then be sent to the Recycle Bin on Windows, and
809to `trash-directory' on other systems.
810
811** Directory-local variables can now be defined.
812By default, Emacs looks in .dir-locals.el for directory-local
813variables. For more information, see `dir-locals-set-directory-class'
814and `dir-locals-set-class-variables'.
815
816** Emacs can now use `auth-source' for authentication.
817`smtpmail' and `url' (Tramp and Gnus also) use `auth-source' to obtain
818login names and passwords. The match, if found, is reported
819in *Messages* with the password blanked out.
820
821** `where-is-preferred-modifier' can specify your favorite modifier.
822
823\f
824* Startup Changes in Emacs 23.1
825
826** The option `inhibit-startup-screen' (with aliases to old names
827`inhibit-splash-screen' and `inhibit-startup-message') doesn't inhibit
828display of the initial message in the *scratch* buffer. If you don't
829want to display the initial message in the *scratch* buffer at startup,
830you can set the option `initial-scratch-message' to nil.
831
832** New user option `initial-buffer-choice' specifies what to display
833after starting Emacs: startup screen, *scratch* buffer, visiting a
834file or directory.
835
836** New alias `argv' for `command-line-args-left'
837This is a convenience alias, so that one can write `(pop argv)'
838inside of --eval command line arguments in order to access
839following arguments.
840
841** The abbrev file is no longer read at startup in batch mode.
842
843** Emacs now supports invocation by an X session manager.
844It can save a session and restore it later. See the documentation of
845the functions `emacs-session-save' and `emacs-session-restore'.
846(Actually, this feature was introduced with Emacs 22, but it was not
847documented.)
848\f
849* Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1
850
851** In Dired, `dired-flag-garbage-files' is rebound from `&' to `%&'
852on the regexp command prefix map.
853
854** In Dired-x, all command guesses for ! are now added to the default
855list accessible by M-n instead of pushing all guesses temporarily into
856the history list.
857
858** In Isearch mode, a special case of typing `C-w' at the beginning of
859the minibuffer that toggles word search (i.e. using key sequences
860`C-s RET C-w' or `C-s M-e C-w') is obsolete. You can use the global key
861`M-s w' to start word search, or type `M-s w' in Isearch mode to
862toggle word search. To start nonincremental word search you can now use
863`M-s w RET' and `M-s w C-r RET' instead of `C-s RET C-w' and `C-r RET C-w'.
864
865** In Info, `Info-search' is unbound from `M-s' to allow using `M-s w'
866for word search as well as other search commands from the global prefix
867key `M-s'. `Info-search' is still bound to `s', and also incremental
868search commands `C-s', `C-M-s', `C-r', `C-M-r' are available for searching
869through multiple Info nodes, together with their nonincremental versions
870`C-s RET', `C-r RET', `C-M-s RET', `C-M-r RET', `M-s w RET'.
871
872** In Text mode, `center-line' and `center-paragraph' are rebound from
873`M-s' and `M-S' to global keys `M-o M-s' and `M-o M-S' on the global
874prefix map `M-o', which is intended for such formatting commands.
875
876** The following input methods were removed in Emacs 22.2, but this was
877not advertised: danish-alt-postfix, esperanto-alt-postfix,
878finnish-alt-postfix, german-alt-postfix, icelandic-alt-postfix,
879norwegian-alt-postfix, scandinavian-alt-postfix, spanish-alt-postfix,
880and swedish-alt-postfix. Use the versions without "alt-", which are
881identical.
882
883\f
884* Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1
885
886** The C-n and C-p line-motion commands now move by screen lines,
887taking continued lines and variable-width characters into account.
888Setting `line-move-visual' to nil reverts this to the previous
889behavior (i.e., motion by logical lines based on buffer contents
890alone).
891
892** C-x C-c now invokes `save-buffers-kill-terminal', and C-z now
893invokes `suspend-frame'. These changes are for compatibility with the
894new multi-tty support (see `Improved X Window System support' above).
895
896** Mark changes
897
898*** Transient Mark mode is now on by default.
899
900*** mark-even-if-inactive now defaults to t
901
902*** When Transient Mark mode is on, C-SPC C-SPC pushes a mark without
903activating it.
904
905*** When Transient Mark mode is on, M-q now fills the region if the
906region is active. Otherwise, it fills the current paragraph.
907
908*** When Transient Mark mode is on, M-$ now checks spelling of the
909region if the region is active. Otherwise, it checks spelling of the
910word at point.
911
912*** When Transient Mark mode is on, TAB now indents the region if the
913region is active.
914
915*** The variable `use-empty-active-region' controls whether an empty
916active region in Transient Mark mode should make commands operate on
917that empty region.
918
919** Temporarily active regions
920
921*** The new variable shift-select-mode, non-nil by default, controls
922shift-selection. When Shift Select mode is on, shift-translated
923motion keys (e.g. S-left and S-down) activate and extend a temporary
924region, similar to mouse-selection.
925
926*** Temporarily active regions, created using shift-selection or
927mouse-selection, are not necessarily deactivated in the next command.
928They are only deactivated after point motion commands that are not
929shift-translated, or after commands that would ordinarily deactivate
930the mark in Transient Mark mode (e.g., any command that modifies the
931buffer).
932
933** Minibuffer and completion changes
934
935*** Emacs may ask for confirmation before opening a non-existent file
936or buffer. By default, Emacs requests confirmation if you type RET
937immediately after TAB, and the resulting input is not an existing file
938or buffer; this usually happens when the minibuffer input did not
939complete far enough and you entered RET by mistake. In that case,
940Emacs puts the message "[Confirm]" in the minibuffer; type RET again
941to create the file or buffer.
942
943The new variable confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer determines whether
944Emacs asks for confirmation. The default value is `after-completion'.
945If you change it to t, Emacs always asks for confirmation; if you
946change it to nil, Emacs never asks for confirmation.
947
948*** The rules for performing completion have been changed.
949When generating completion alternatives, Emacs now takes the
950minibuffer text after point, if any, into account: this text is
951treated as a substring of the remaining part of the completion
952alternative (i.e., the part not matched by the minibuffer text before
953point). If no completion alternatives are found this way, Emacs
954attempts to perform partial-completion. If still no completion
955alternatives are found, we fall back on the Emacs 22 rules for
956performing completion.
957
958The new variable `completion-styles' can be customized to choose your
959favorite completion style.
960
961*** When M-n in the minibuffer reaches the end of the list of defaults,
962it adds the completion list to the end, so next M-n continues putting
963completion items to the minibuffer. The same principle applies to
964incremental search commands as well: C-s or C-M-s starts searching
965the default values and after the end of defaults they continue
966searching minibuffer completion items.
967
968*** Minibuffer input of shell commands now comes with completion.
969
970*** In the `C-x d' (Dired) prompt, typing M-n gives the visited file
971name of the current buffer.
972
973*** In the M-! (shell-command) prompt, M-n provides some default commands.
974These are guessed using the file extension of the current file, based
975on the file-handlers specified in the operating system's `mailcap'
976file. The ! command in Dired (dired-do-shell-command) works
977similarly, using the file displayed on the current line.
978
979*** A list of regexp default values is available via M-n for `occur',
980`keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many'. This list includes the active
981region in transient-mark-mode, the word under the cursor, the last Isearch
982regexp, the last Isearch string and the last replacement regexp.
983
984*** When enable-recursive-minibuffers is non-nil, operations which use
985switch-to-buffer (such as C-x b and C-x C-f) do not fail any more when
986used in a minibuffer or a dedicated window. Instead, they fallback on
987using pop-to-buffer, which will use some other window. This change
988has no effect when enable-recursive-minibuffers is nil (the default).
989
990*** Isearch started in the minibuffer searches in the minibuffer history.
991Reverse Isearch commands (C-r, C-M-r) search in previous minibuffer
992history elements, and forward Isearch commands (C-s, C-M-s) search in
993next history elements. When the reverse search reaches the first history
994element, it wraps to the last history element, and the forward search
995wraps to the first history element. When the search is terminated, the
996history element containing the search string becomes the current.
997
998*** The variable read-file-name-completion-ignore-case overrides
999completion-ignore-case for file name completion.
1000
1001*** The variable read-buffer-completion-ignore-case overrides
1002completion-ignore-case for buffer name completion.
1003
1004*** The new command `minibuffer-force-complete' chooses one of the
1005possible completions, rather than stopping at the common prefix.
1006
1007*** If `completion-auto-help' is `lazy', Emacs shows the completions
1008buffer only on the second attempt to complete. This was already
1009supported in `partial-completion-mode'.
1010
1011** Face changes
1012
1013*** S-down-mouse-1 now pops up a menu for changing the font and text
1014size of the default face in the current buffer. The face is changed
1015via face remapping (see Lisp changes, below).
1016
1017*** New commands to change the default face size in the current buffer.
1018To increase it, type `C-x C-+' or `C-x C-='. To decrease it, type
1019`C-x C--'. To restore the default (global) face size, type `C-x C-0'.
1020These work via Text Scale mode, a new minor mode.
1021
1022The final key in the above commands may be repeated without the
1023leading `C-x', e.g. `C-x C-= C-= C-=' increases the face height by
1024three steps. Each step scales the height of the default face by the
1025value of the variable `text-scale-mode-step'.
1026
1027*** The commands buffer-face-mode and buffer-face-set can be used to
1028remap the default face in the current buffer. See "Buffer Face mode",
1029under New Modes and Packages.
1030
1031** Primary selection changes
1032
1033*** You can disable kill ring commands from accessing the primary
1034selection by setting `x-select-enable-primary' to nil.
1035
1036** Continuation lines can now be wrapped at word boundaries
1037(word-wrapping). This is controlled by the new per-buffer variable
1038`word-wrap'. Word wrapping does not take place if continuation lines
1039are not shown, e.g. if truncate-lines is non-nil. The most convenient
1040way to enable word-wrapping is using the new minor mode Visual Line
1041mode; in addition to setting `word-wrap' to t, this rebinds some
1042editing commands to work on screen lines rather than text lines. See
1043New Modes and Packages, below.
1044
1045** Window management changes
1046
1047*** truncate-partial-width-windows now accepts integer values, which
1048specify a minimum window width for partial-width windows, below which
1049lines are truncated. The default has been changed to 50.
1050
1051*** The new command balance-windows-area balances windows both
1052vertically and horizontally.
1053
1054*** pop-to-buffer now always sets input focus when the popped-to window
1055is on a different frame.
1056
1057** Miscellaneous changes:
1058
1059*** C-l is bound to the new command recenter-top-bottom, rather than recenter.
1060This moves the current line to window center, top and bottom on
1061successive invocations.
1062
1063*** scroll-preserve-screen-position also preserves the column position.
1064
1065*** If `yank-pop-change-selection' is t, rotating the kill ring also
1066updates the selection or clipboard to the current yank, just as M-w
1067would do so with the text it copies to the kill ring.
1068
1069*** C-M-% now shows replacement as it would look in the buffer, with
1070`\N' and `\&' substituted according to the match. Old behavior can be
1071restored by customizing `query-replace-show-replacement'.
1072
1073*** The command shell prompts for the default directory, when it is
1074called with a prefix and the default directory is a remote file name.
1075This is because some file name handlers (like ange-ftp) are not able to
1076run processes remotely.
1077
1078*** The new command kill-matching-buffers kills buffers whose name
1079matches a regexp.
1080
1081*** The value of comment-style now defaults to `indent'.
1082Thefore, comment-start markers are inserted at the current indentation
1083of the region to comment, rather than the leftmost column.
1084
1085*** The new commands `pp-macroexpand-expression' and
1086`pp-macroexpand-last-sexp' pretty-print macro expansions.
1087
1088*** The new command `set-file-modes' allows to set file's mode bits.
1089The mode bits can be specified in symbolic notation, like with GNU
1090Coreutils, in addition to an octal number. `chmod' is a new
1091convenience alias for this function.
1092
1093*** `next-error-recenter' specifies how next-error should recenter the
1094visited source file. Its value can be a number (for example, 0 for
1095top line, -1 for bottom line), or nil for no recentering.
1096
1097*** When typing in a password in the echo area, C-y yanks the current
1098kill into the password.
1099
1100*** Tooltip frame parameters `font' and `color' in `tooltip-frame-parameters'
1101are ignored. Customize the `tooltip' face instead.
1102
1103*** `mkdir' is a new convenience alias for `make-directory'.
1104\f
1105* New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1
1106
1107** Auto Composition Mode is a minor mode that composes characters
1108automatically when they are displayed. It is globally on by default.
1109It uses `auto-composition-function' (default `auto-compose-chars').
1110
1111** Bubbles, a new game, is similar to SameGame.
1112
1113** Buffer Face mode is a minor mode for remapping the default face in
1114the current buffer. The variable `buffer-face-mode-face' specifies
1115the face to remap to. The command `buffer-face-set' prompts for a
1116face name, sets `buffer-face-mode-face' to it, and enables
1117buffer-face-mode. See "Face changes", under Editing Changes, for a
1118description of face remapping.
1119
1120** butterfly flips the desired bit on the drive platter.
1121See http://xkcd.com/378/
1122
1123** bug-reference.el provides clickable links to bug reports.
1124
1125** dbus.el provides D-Bus language bindings.
1126D-Bus is an inter-process communication mechanism for applications
1127residing on the same host. See the manual for details.
1128
1129** DocView mode allows viewing of PDF, PostScript and DVI documents.
1130One can also search for a regular expression in the document. For
1131details, see the commentary in doc-view.el.
1132
1133PDF and DVI files are now opened in Doc View mode by default.
1134
1135In Postcript mode, C-c C-c launches Doc View minor mode for viewing
1136the postscript file.
1137
1138** EasyPG provides an interface to the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG).
1139It includes a GnuPG keyring browser, cryptographic operations on
1140regions and files, and automatic encryption of *.gpg files. For
1141details, see the EasyPG Assistant User's Manual.
1142
1143** json.el is a library for parsing and generating JSON
1144(JavaScript Object Notation), a lightweight data-interchange format.
1145
1146** linum.el is a new minor mode to display line numbers for the
1147current buffer.
1148
1149** mairix.el is an interface to mairix, a free tool for indexing and
1150searching locally stored mail. It allows you to query mairix and
1151display the search results with Rmail, Gnus and VM. Note that there
1152is an existing Gnus back end, nnmairix.el, which should be used with
1153Maildir/MH setups.
1154
1155** minibuffer-depth-indicate-mode shows the minibuffer depth in the prompt.
1156
1157** nXML Mode
1158This is a new mode for editing XML documents. It allows a schema to
1159be associated with the XML document being edited, using Relax NG as
1160the schema language. The schema is used to provide two key features:
1161
1162*** Continuous validation. nXML validates as you type, highlighting
1163any invalid parts of your document.
1164
1165*** Completion. nXML can assist you in entering an element name,
1166attribute name or data value by using information about what is
1167allowed by the schema in that context.
1168
1169** proced.el provides a Dired-like interface for operating on
1170processes. Proced makes an Emacs buffer containing a listing of the
1171current processes. You can use the normal Emacs commands to move
1172around in this buffer, and special Proced commands to operate on the
1173processes listed. It is currently only functional on GNU/Linux,
1174MS-Windows and Solaris.
1175
1176** Remember Mode is a mode for jotting down things to remember.
1177Notes can be saved to a Diary file. For details, see the Remember
1178Manual.
1179
1180** RST mode is a major mode for editing reStructuredText files.
1181
1182** Ruby mode is a major mode for Ruby files.
1183
1184** Visual Line mode provides support for editing by visual lines.
1185It turns on word-wrapping in the current buffer, and rebinds C-a, C-e,
1186and C-k to commands that operate by visual lines instead of logical
1187lines. This is a more reliable replacement for longlines-mode.
1188This can also be turned on using the menu bar, via
1189Options -> Line Wrapping in this Buffer -> Word Wrap
1190
1191** xesam.el is an implementation of Xesam, an interface to (desktop)
1192search engines like Beagle, Strigi, and Tracker. The Xesam API
1193requires D-Bus for communication.
1194
1195** zeroconf.el offers service discovery and service publishing
1196interfaces according to the zeroconf specification. It communicates
1197with Avahi, a zeroconf implementation, via D-Bus messages on systems
1198which have installed this software.
1199
1200** There is a new `whitespace' package.
1201(The pre-existing one has been renamed to `old-whitespace'.)
1202Now, besides reporting bogus blanks, the whitespace package has a
1203minor mode and a global minor mode to visualize blanks (TAB, (HARD)
1204SPACE and NEWLINE). The visualization is made via faces and/or display
1205table. It can also indicate lines that extend beyond a given column,
1206trailing blanks, and empty lines at the start or end of a buffer.
1207See `whitespace-style' for more details. The `whitespace-action' option
1208specifies what to do when a buffer is visited, killed, or written.
1209
1210\f
1211* Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1
1212
1213** Abbrev has been rewritten in Elisp and extended with more flexibility.
1214
1215*** New functions: abbrev-get, abbrev-put, abbrev-table-get, abbrev-table-put,
1216abbrev-table-p, abbrev-insert, abbrev-table-menu.
1217
1218*** Special hook `abbrev-expand-functions' obsoletes `pre-abbrev-expand-hook'.
1219
1220*** `make-abbrev-table', `define-abbrev', `define-abbrev-table' all take
1221extra arguments for arbitrary properties.
1222
1223*** New variable `abbrev-minor-mode-table-alist'.
1224
1225*** `local-abbrev-table' can hold a list of abbrev-tables.
1226
1227*** Abbrevs have now the following special properties:
1228`:count', `:system', `:enable-function', `:case-fixed'.
1229
1230*** Abbrev-tables have now the following special properties:
1231`:parents', `:case-fixed', `:enable-function', `:regexp',
1232`abbrev-table-modiff'.
1233
1234** Apropos
1235
1236*** `apropos-library' describes the elements defined in a given library.
1237
1238*** Set `apropos-compact-layout' is you want a more compact (but wider) layout.
1239
1240** Archive Mode has basic support to browse Rar archives.
1241Note, however, that the free version of the unrar command only handles
1242versions 1 and 2 of the Rar format.
1243
1244** BibTeX mode
1245
1246*** New command `bibtex-initialize' (re)initializes BibTeX buffers.
1247
1248*** New `bibtex-entry-format' options `whitespace', `braces', and
1249`string', disabled by default.
1250
1251*** New variable `bibtex-cite-matcher-alist' contains rules to
1252identify cited keys in BibTeX entries, used by `bibtex-find-crossref'.
1253
1254*** Command `bibtex-url' allows multiple URLs per entry.
1255
1256** Bookmarks
1257
1258*** bookmark.el saves bookmarks in a pre-Emacs-23-incompatible file format
1259bookmark.el can read a .emacs.bmk file saved by an older Emacs, but an
1260older Emacs cannot read one saved by Emacs 23.
1261
1262** Calendar and diary
1263
1264*** There is a new date style, `iso', essentially year/month/day.
1265The variable `european-calendar-style' is obsolete - use `calendar-date-style'.
1266Similarly, the commands `american-calendar' and `european-calendar'
1267should be replaced by `calendar-set-date-style'.
1268
1269*** The calendar namespace has been rationalized.
1270All functions and variables now begin with a `calendar-', `diary-', or
1271`holiday-' prefix. The various calendar systems have secondary
1272prefixes, eg `calendar-french-'. The old names you are likely to use
1273directly still exist, for the time being, as aliases, but please start
1274using the new names.
1275
1276*** The whitespace in the calendar layout can be customized.
1277See the variables:
1278calendar-left-margin, calendar-intermonth-spacing, calendar-column-width,
1279calendar-day-header-width, and calendar-day-digit-width.
1280
1281*** Text (e.g. ISO weeks) can be displayed between the calendar months.
1282See the variables calendar-intermonth-header and calendar-intermonth-text.
1283
1284*** The function `holiday-chinese' computes holidays on the Chinese calendar.
1285It has been used to add items to the list `holiday-oriental-holidays'.
1286
1287*** `diary-remind' accepts a negative number -DAYS as a shorthand for
1288the list (1 2 ... DAYS).
1289
1290** Change Log mode
1291
1292*** The new command C-c C-f (change-log-find-file) finds the file
1293associated with the current log entry.
1294
1295*** The new command C-c C-c (change-log-goto-source) goes to the
1296source code associated with a log entry.
1297
1298** Compile and grep modes
1299
1300*** The mode-line entry for the *compilation* and *grep* buffer is color coded.
1301It has different colors for to show that: (a) the command is still
1302running, (b) successful completion, (c) error.
1303
1304*** compilation-auto-jump-to-first-error tells `compile' to jump to
1305the first error encountered during compilations.
1306
1307*** compilation-scroll-output accepts a new value, `first-error', which
1308says to stop auto scrolling at the first error that occurs.
1309
1310*** The `cc' alias for C++ files in `grep-file-aliases' has been
1311improved. `hh' can be used to match C++ header files and `cchh' both
1312C++ sources and headers.
1313
1314** Copyright
1315
1316*** You can specify your copyright holders' names.
1317Only copyright lines with holders matching `copyright-names-regexp' are
1318considered for update.
1319
1320*** Copyrights can be at the end of the buffer.
1321This is controlled by `copyright-at-end-flag' (used by, e.g., change-log-mode).
1322
1323** Custom
1324
1325*** defcustom accepts new keyword arguments, `:safe' and `:risky', which
1326set a variable's `safe-local-variable' and `risky-local-variable' property.
1327
1328** Diff mode
1329
1330*** diff-refine-hunk highlights word-level details of changes in a diff hunk.
1331It's used automatically as you move through hunks, see
1332diff-auto-refine-mode. It is bound to `C-c C-b'.
1333
1334*** diff-add-change-log-entries-other-window iterates through the diff
1335buffer and tries to create ChangeLog entries for each change.
1336It is bound to `C-x 4 A'.
1337
1338*** Turning on `whitespace-mode' in a diff buffer will show trailing
1339whitespace problems in the modified lines.
1340
1341** Dired
1342
1343*** In Dired, C-x C-q now runs the command wdired-change-to-wdired-mode,
1344and C-x C-q in wdired-mode exits it with asking a question about
1345saving changes.
1346
1347*** `&' runs the command `dired-do-async-shell-command' that executes
1348the command asynchronously without the need to manually add ampersand
1349to the end of the command. Its output appears in the buffer `*Async Shell
1350Command*'.
1351
1352*** `M-s f C-s' and `M-s f M-C-s' run Isearch that matches only at file names.
1353When a new user option `dired-isearch-filenames' is t, then even ordinary
1354Isearch started with `C-s' and `C-M-s' matches only at file names in the
1355Dired buffer. When `dired-isearch-filenames' is `dwim' then activation of
1356file name Isearch depends on the position of point - if point is on a file
1357name initially, then Isearch matches only file names, otherwise it matches
1358everywhere in the Dired buffer. You can toggle file names matching on or
1359off by typing `M-s f' in Isearch mode.
1360
1361*** `M-s a C-s' and `M-s a M-C-s' run multi-file Isearch on the marked files.
1362They visit the first marked file in the sequence and display the usual Isearch
1363prompt for a string or a regexp where all Isearch commands are available.
1364
1365*** `Q' in Dired provides two new keys for multi-file replacement.
1366The upper case key `Y' replaces all remaining matches in all remaining files
1367with no more questions. The upper case key `N' stops doing replacements
1368in the current file and skips to the next file. These multi-file keys
1369are available for all commands that use `tags-query-replace'
1370including `dired-do-query-replace-regexp', `vc-dir-query-replace-regexp',
1371`reftex-query-replace-document'.
1372
1373** Fortran
1374
1375*** The line length of fixed-form Fortran is not fixed at 72 any more.
1376Customize the variable `fortran-line-length' to change it.
1377
1378*** In Fortran mode, M-; is now bound to the standard comment-dwim,
1379rather than fortran-indent-comment.
1380
1381*** (The increasingly misnamed) F90 mode supports Fortran 2003 syntax.
1382
1383** Gnus
1384
1385*** The Gnus package has been updated
0235128c 1386There are many new features, bug fixes and improvements; see the file
eb199145
GM
1387GNUS-NEWS or the node "No Gnus" in the Gnus manual for details.
1388
1389*** In Emacs 23, Gnus uses Emacs' new internal coding system `utf-8-emacs' for
0235128c 1390saving articles, drafts, and ~/.newsrc.eld. These file may not be read
eb199145
GM
1391correctly in Emacs 22 and below. If you want to Gnus across different Emacs
1392versions, you may set `mm-auto-save-coding-system' to `emacs-mule'.
1393
1394*** Passwords are consistently loaded through `auth-source'
1395Gnus can use `auth-source' for POP and IMAP passwords. Also see that
1396`smtpmail' and `url' support `auth-source' for SMTP and HTTP/HTTPS/RSS
1397authentication respectively.
1398
1399** Help mode
1400
1401*** New macro `with-help-window' should set up help windows better
1402than `with-output-to-temp-buffer' with `print-help-return-message'.
1403
1404*** New option `help-window-select' permits to customize whether help
1405window shall be automatically selected when invoking help.
1406
1407*** New variable `help-window-point-marker' permits one to specify a new
1408position for point in help window (for example in `view-lossage').
1409
1410** Isearch
1411
1412*** New command `isearch-forward-word' bound globally to `M-s w' starts
1413incremental word search. New command `isearch-toggle-word' bound to the
1414same key `M-s w' in Isearch mode toggles word searching on or off
1415while Isearch is active.
1416
1417*** New command `isearch-highlight-regexp' bound to `M-s h r' in Isearch
1418mode runs `highlight-regexp' (`hi-lock-face-buffer') with the current
1419search string as its regexp argument. The same key `M-s h r' and
1420other keys on the `M-s h' prefix are bound globally to the command
1421`highlight-regexp' and other hi-lock commands.
1422
1423*** New command `isearch-occur' bound to `M-s o' in Isearch mode
1424runs `occur' with the current search string. The same key `M-s o'
1425is bound globally to the command `occur'.
1426
1427*** Isearch can now search through multiple ChangeLog files.
1428When running Isearch in a ChangeLog file, if the search fails,
1429then another C-s tries searching the previous ChangeLog,
1430if there is one (e.g. going from ChangeLog to ChangeLog.12).
1431This is enabled if multi-isearch-search is non-nil.
1432
1433*** Two new commands to start Isearch on a list of marked buffers
1434for buff-menu.el and ibuffer.el are bound to the keys `M-s a C-s' and
1435`M-s a M-C-s'.
1436
1437*** The part of an Isearch that failed to match is highlighted in
1438`isearch-fail' face.
1439
1440*** `C-h C-h' in Isearch mode displays isearch-specific Help screen,
1441`C-h b' displays all Isearch key bindings, `C-h k' displays the full
1442documentation of the given Isearch key sequence, `C-h m' displays
0235128c
SM
1443documentation for Isearch mode. All the other Help commands exit
1444Isearch mode and execute their global definitions.
eb199145
GM
1445
1446*** When started in the minibuffer, Isearch searches in the minibuffer
1447history. See `Minibuffer changes', above.
1448
1449** MH-E
1450
1451*** Upgraded to MH-E version 8.2. See MH-E-NEWS for details.
1452
1453** Python
1454*** The file etc/emacs.py now supports both Python 2 and 3, meaning
1455that either version can be used as inferior Python by python.el.
1456
1457*** Python mode now has `pdbtrack' functionality. When using pdb to
1458debug a Python program, pdbtrack notices the pdb prompt and displays
1459the source file and line that the program is stopped at, much the same
1460way as gud-mode does for debugging C programs with gdb.
1461
1462** Recentf
1463
1464*** The default value of `recentf-keep' prevents from checking of
1465remote files, if there is no established connection to the
1466corresponding remote host.
1467
1468** Rmail
1469
1470*** Rmail no longer converts the messages to Babyl format.
1471Instead, it uses UNIX mbox format, both on disk and in Rmail buffers,
1472and does conversion and decoding when a message is displayed.
1473
1474The first time you visit an Rmail file in Babyl format, Rmail
1475automatically converts it to mbox format. This is a one-time
1476conversion, but it can take a few minutes, depending on how fast is
1477your machine and on the size of the file. You should find the rest of
1478Rmail usage unaltered.
1479
1480However, M-x set-rmail-inbox-list now lasts only for one session
1481because there is no way to save the list of inbox files in an
1482mbox-format file.
1483
1484Also, whereas with Babyl format M-x find-file would switch to Rmail
1485mode, with mbox format this is no longer the case (there being no way
1486to add an "-*- rmail-*-" cookie to an mbox file). Use C-u M-x rmail
1487instead.
1488
1489If you have written any extensions to Rmail, they are likely to need
1490updating. Conceptually, the Rmail buffer that you see is no longer
1491just a narrowed portion of the whole. So you cannot access the whole
1492of a message (or message collection) by a simple save-restriction and
1493widen. Instead, there are two buffers: the rmail-buffer, and the
1494rmail-view-buffer. The former is the buffer that you see, the latter
1495is invisible. Most of the time, the invisible `view' buffer contains
1496the full contents of the Rmail file, and the Rmail buffer contains a
1497decoded copy of the current message (with only a subset of the
1498headers). In this state, Rmail is said to be `swapped'.
1499
1500You may find the following functions useful:
1501
1502`rmail-get-header' and `rmail-set-header' get or set the value of a
1503message header, whether or not it is currently visible.
1504
1505`rmail-apply-in-message' is a general purpose function that calls a
1506function (with arguments) which you specify on the full text of a given
1507message. To further narrow to just the headers, search forward for "\n\n".
1508
1509*** The new command `rmail-mime' displays MIME messages.
1510It is bound to `v' in Rmail buffers and summaries. It displays plain
1511text and multipart messages in a temporary buffer, and offers buttons
1512to save attachments.
1513
1514*** The command `rmail-redecode-body' no longer accepts the optional arg RAW.
1515Since Rmail now holds messages in their original undecoded form in a
1516separate buffer, `rmail-redecode-body' no longer encodes the original
1517message, and therefore there should be no need to avoid encoding it.
1518
1519*** The o command is now `rmail-output'. It is an all-purpose command
1520for copying messages from Rmail and appending them to files. It
1521handles Babyl-format files as well as mbox-format files, and it
1522handles both kinds properly when they are visited in Emacs. It always
1523copies the full headers of the message.
1524
1525*** The C-o command is now `rmail-output-as-seen'. It uses
1526the message as displayed, appending it to an mbox file.
1527
1528*** The modified status of the Rmail buffer is reported in the mode-line.
1529Previously, this information was hidden.
1530
1531** TeX modes
1532
1533*** New option latex-indent-within-escaped-parens
1534permits to customize indentation of LaTeX environments delimited
1535by escaped parens.
1536
1537** T-mouse Mode
1538
1539*** If the gpm mouse server is running and t-mouse-mode is enabled,
1540Emacs uses a Unix socket in a GNU/Linux console to talk to server,
1541rather than faking events using the client program mev. This C level
1542approach provides mouse highlighting and help echoing in the
1543minibuffer.
1544
1545** Tramp
1546
1547*** New connection methods.
1548The new methods "plinkx", "plink2", "psftp", "sftp" and "fish" have
1549been introduced. There are also new so-called gateway methods
1550"tunnel" and "socks".
1551
1552*** IPv6 addresses.
1553IPv6 addresses are supported now as host names. They must be embedded
1554in square brackets, like in "/ssh:[::1]:".
1555
1556*** Multihop syntax has been removed.
1557The pseudo-method "multi" has been removed. Instead, multi hops
1558can be specified by the new variable `tramp-default-proxies-alist'.
1559
1560*** More default settings.
1561Default values can be set via the variables `tramp-default-user',
1562`tramp-default-user-alist' and `tramp-default-host'.
1563
1564*** Connection information is cached.
1565In order to reduce connection setup, information about used
1566connections is kept persistently in a file. The name of this file is
1567defined in the variable `tramp-persistency-file-name'.
1568
1569*** Control of remote processes.
1570Running processes on a remote host can be controlled by settings in
1571`tramp-remote-path' and `tramp-remote-process-environment'.
1572
1573*** Success of remote copy is checked.
1574When the variable `file-precious-flag' is set, the success of a remote
1575file copy is checked via the file's checksum.
1576
1577*** Passwords can be read from an authentification file.
1578Tramp uses the package `auth-source' to read passwords from a file, if
1579necessary.
1580
1581** VC and related modes
1582
1583*** VC now supports applying VC operations to a set of files at a time.
1584This enables VC to work much more effectively with changeset-oriented
1585version-control systems such as Subversion, GNU Arch, Mercurial, Git
1586and Bzr. VC will now pass a multiple-file commit to these systems as
1587a single changeset.
1588
1589*** vc-dir is a new command that displays file names and their VC
1590status. It allows to apply various VC operations to a file, a
1591directory or a set of files/directories.
1592
1593*** VC switches are no longer appended, rather the first non-nil value is used.
1594(This was for the most part true in Emacs 22, but was not advertised).
1595This is because there is an increasing variety of VC systems, and they
1596do not all accept the same "common" options. For example, a CVS diff
1597command used to append the values of `vc-cvs-diff-switches',
1598`vc-diff-switches', and `diff-switches'. Now the first non-nil value
1599from that sequence is used. The special value `t' means "no switches".
1600
1601*** Clicking on the VC mode-line entry now pops the VC menu.
1602
1603*** The VC mode-line entry now has a tooltip that explains the VC file status.
1604
1605*** In VC Annotate mode, the key bindings have changed to use lower
1606case keys instead of the upper case keys used in the past.
1607
1608*** In VC Annotate mode, for VC systems that support changesets, you can
1609see the diff for the whole changeset (not only for the current file)
1610by typing the D key. Using the "Show changeset diff of revision at
1611line" menu entry does the same thing.
1612
1613*** In VC Annotate mode, you can type v to toggle the annotation visibility.
1614
1615*** In VC Annotate mode, you can type f to show the file revision on
1616the current line.
1617
1618*** Asynchronous VC commands display [Waiting...] in the mode-line
1619of the corresponding buffer as long as the asynchronous process is
1620active.
1621
1622*** Log entries can be modified using the key "e" in log-view.
1623For now only CVS, RCS, SCCS and SVN support this functionality.
1624This is done by the `modify-change-comment' backend function.
1625
1626*** In log-view-mode, for VC systems that support changesets, you can
1627see the diff for the whole changeset (not only for the current file)
1628by typing the D key or using the "Changeset Diff" menu entry.
1629
1630*** In Log Edit mode, C-c C-d now shows the diff for the files involved.
1631
1632*** vc-git supports the "git grep" command.
1633
1634*** VC Support for Meta-CVS has been removed for lack of a maintainer able
1635to update it to the new VC.
1636
1637** Miscellaneous
1638
1639*** comint-mode uses `start-file-process' now (see Lisp Changes).
1640If `default-directory' is a remote file name, subprocesses are started
1641on the corresponding remote system.
1642
1643*** Eldoc highlights the function argument under point
1644with the face `eldoc-highlight-function-argument'.
1645
1646*** In Etags, the --members option is now the default.
1647Use --no-members if you want the old default behavior of not tagging
1648struct members in C, members variables in C++ and variables in PHP.
1649
1650*** The `gdb' command only works with the graphical interface now.
1651Use `gud-gdb' if you want the (old) text command mode.
1652
1653*** goto-address.el provides two new minor modes, goto-address-mode and
1654goto-address-prog-mode, which buttonize URLS and email addresses.
1655
1656*** The new command `eshell/info' runs info in an eshell buffer.
1657
1658*** The new variable `ffap-rfc-directories' specifies a list of local
1659directories in which `ffap-rfc' will first search for RFCs.
1660
1661*** hide-ifdef-mode allows shadowing ifdef-blocks instead of hiding them.
1662See option `hide-ifdef-shadow' and function `hide-ifdef-toggle-shadowing'.
1663
1664*** `icomplete-prospects-height' now supercedes `icomplete-prospects-length'.
1665
1666*** Info displays breadcrumbs in the header of the page.
1667See Info-breadcrumbs-depth to control it.
1668
1669*** net-utils has an `iwconfig' command, similar to the existing `ifconfig'.
1670It is used to configure wireless interfaces.
1671
1672*** The pcmpl-unix package supports hostname completion for ssh and scp.
1673
1674*** sgml-electric-tag-pair-mode lets you simultaneously edit matched tag pairs.
1675
1676*** smerge-refine highlights word-level details of changes in conflict.
1677It's used automatically as you move through conflicts, see
1678smerge-auto-refine-mode.
1679
1680*** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support.
1681
1682*** A new command `display-time-world' has been added to the Time
1683package. It creates a buffer with an updating time display using
1684several time zones.
1685
1686*** The appearance of superscript and subscript in TeX is more customizable.
1687See the documentation of the variables: tex-fontify-script,
1688tex-font-script-display, tex-suscript-height-ratio, and
1689tex-suscript-height-minimum.
1690
1691*** view-remove-frame-by-deleting is now by default t
1692since users found iconification of view-mode frames distracting.
1693
1694*** WoMan tries to add locale-specific manual page directories to the
1695search path. This can be disabled by setting `woman-locale' to nil.
1696
1697\f
1698* Changes in Emacs 23.1 on non-free operating systems
1699
1700** Case is now considered significant in completion on MS-Windows.
1701The default value of `completion-ignore-case' is now nil on
1702MS-Windows, the same as it is for other operating systems. The
1703variable doesn't apply to reading a file name -- in that case Emacs
1704heeds `read-file-name-completion-ignore-case' instead.
1705
1706** IPv6 is supported on MS-Windows.
1707Emacs now supports IPv6 on Windows XP and later, and earlier versions
1708of Windows with third party IPv6 stacks installed. In Emacs 22, IPv6 was
1709supported on other platforms, but not on Windows due to using the winsock
17101.1 header file, even though Emacs was linking to the winsock 2 library.
1711
1712** Busy cursor (hourglass) now displays on MS-Windows.
1713When Emacs is busy, an hourglass mouse cursor is displayed on Windows.
1714In Emacs 22 only X supported the busy cursor.
1715
1716** Battery status is available on MS-Windows
1717Emacs can now display the battery status in the mode-line when enabled with
1718display-battery-mode or from the Options menu. More verbose battery
1719information is also available with the command `battery'. In Emacs 22
1720battery status was supported only on GNU/Linux and Mac.
1721
1722** More keys available on MS-Windows.
1723Keys normally associated with IMEs, and some exotic keys not normally found
1724on standard keyboards have been given names so they can be bound to functions
1725inside Emacs. If there are keys on your keyboard that have not been exposed
1726to Emacs in the past, try C-h k to see if they are available now.
1727
1728Emacs can now bind functions to the extra buttons for media player and
1729browser control present on some keyboards. These buttons are disabled
1730by default, since enabling them prevents their system-wide use when
1731Emacs has focus. To enable them, set the variable
1732w32-pass-multimedia-buttons to nil. See the doc string of that variable
1733for the list of extra keys that are available.
1734
1735** BDF fonts no longer supported on MS-Windows.
1736The font backend was completely rewritten for this release. The focus
1737on Windows has been getting acceptable performance and full unicode
1738support, including complex script shaping for native Windows fonts. A
1739rewrite of the BDF font support has not happened due to lack of time
1740and developers. If demand still exists for such a backend even with
1741the improved language support for native Windows fonts, future
1742development in this direction will most likely be based on the
1743freetype library, giving access to a wider range of font formats.
1744
1745\f
1746* Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1
1747
1748** Variables cannot be both buffer-local and frame-local any more.
1749
1750** `functionp' returns nil for special forms.
1751I.e., it only returns t for objects that can be passed to `funcall'.
1752
1753** The behavior of map-char-table has changed. It may call the
1754specified function with a cons (FROM . TO) as a key if characters in
1755that range have the same value.
1756
1757** Process changes
1758
1759*** The function `dired-call-process' has been removed.
1760
1761*** The multibyteness of process filters is now determined by the
1762coding-system used for decoding. The functions
1763`process-filter-multibyte-p' and `set-process-filter-multibyte' are
1764obsolete.
1765
1766** The variable `byte-compile-warnings' can now be a list starting with `not',
1767meaning to disable the specified warnings. The meaning of this list
1768may therefore be the reverse of what you expect (of course, this is
1769only an issue if you make use of the new `not' syntax). Rather than
1770checking/manipulating elements directly, use the new functions
1771`byte-compile-warning-enabled-p', `byte-compile-disable-warning', and
1772`byte-compile-enable-warning.'
1773
1774** `mode-name' is no longer guaranteed to be a string.
1775Use `(format-mode-line mode-name)' to ensure a string value.
1776
1777** The function x-font-family-list has been removed.
1778Use the new function font-family-list (see Lisp Changes, below).
1779
1780** Internationalization changes
1781
1782*** The value of the function `charset-id' is now always 0.
1783
1784*** The functions `register-char-codings' and `coding-system-spec'
1785have been removed.
1786
1787*** The cpXXX coding systems are now supported automatically.
1788The functions cp-...-codepage, which you had to use in Emacs 22 to
1789enable support for these coding systems, have been deleted.
1790
1791*** The following features have been removed. They were used for
1792displaying various scripts with specific fonts, and are no longer
1793needed now that OpenType font support is available:
1794
1795**** `devanagari' and `devan-util', and all associated devanagari-* and
1796dev-* functions and variables (formerly used for Devanagari script).
1797
1798**** `kannada' and `knd-util', and all associated kannada-* and knd-*
1799functions and variables (formerly used for Kannada script).
1800
1801**** `malayalam' and `mlm-util', and all associated malayalam-* and
1802mlm-* functions and variables (formerly used for Malayalam script).
1803
1804**** `tamil' and `tml-util, and all associated tamil-* and tml-*
1805functions and variables (formerly used for Tamil script).
1806
1807*** The meaning of NAME argument of `set-fontset-font' is changed.
1808Previously nil is accepted as the default fontset. Now, nil is for
1809the fontset of the selected frame and t is for the default fontset.
1810
1811*** The meaning of FONTSET argument of `print-fontset' is changed.
1812Now, nil is for the fontset of the selected frame and t is for the
1813default fontset.
1814
1815** If a function in write-region-annotate-functions returns with a
1816different buffer current, Emacs no longer kills that buffer
1817automatically. This behavior existed in previous versions of Emacs,
1818but was undocumented. To kill a buffer after write-region, give the
1819variable `write-region-post-annotation-function' a buffer-local value
1820of `kill-buffer'.
1821
1822** The variable temp-file-name-pattern has been removed.
1823This variable was only used by call-process-region, which now uses
1824temporary-file-directory instead.
1825
1826** The COUNT and SYSTEM-FLAG arguments to define-abbrev have been
1827removed. The function now takes extra arguments for specifying
1828arbitrary abbrev properties.
1829
1830** end-of-defun-function is now guaranteed to work only when called
1831from the start of a defun. It must now leave point exactly at the end
1832of defun, since `end-of-defun' now itself moves forward over
1833whitespace after calling it.
1834
1835\f
1836* Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1
1837
1838** The new variable `generate-autoload-cookie' controls the magic comment
1839string used by `update-file-autoloads' to find autoloaded forms. The
1840variable `generated-autoload-file' similarly controls the name of the
1841file where `update-file-autoloads' writes the calls to `autoload'.
1842The default values are ";;;###autoload" and `loaddefs.el',
1843respectively.
1844
1845** New primitives `list-system-processes' and `process-attributes'
1846let Lisp programs access the processes that are running on the local
1847machine. See the doc strings of these functions for more details.
1848Not all platforms support accessing this information; on those that
1849don't, these primitives will return nil.
1850
1851** New variable `user-emacs-directory'.
1852Use this instead of "~/.emacs.d".
1853
1854** If a local hook function has a non-nil `permanent-local-hook'
1855property, `kill-all-local-variables' does not remove it from the local
1856value of the hook variable; it remains even if you change major modes.
1857
1858** `frame-inherited-parameters' lets new frames inherit parameters from
1859the selected frame.
1860
1861** New keymap `input-decode-map' overrides like key-translation-map, but
1862applies before function-key-map. Also it is terminal-local contrary to
1863key-translation-map. Terminal-specific key-sequences are generally added to
1864this map rather than to function-key-map now.
1865
1866** `ignore-errors' is now a standard macro (does not require the CL package).
1867
1868** `interprogram-paste-function' can now return one string or a list
1869of strings. In the latter case, Emacs puts the second and following
1870strings on the kill ring.
1871
1872** In `condition-case', a handler can specify "let the debugger run first".
1873You do this by writing `debug' in the list of conditions to be handled,
1874like this:
1875
1876 (condition-case nil
1877 (foo bar)
1878 ((debug error) nil))
1879
1880** clone-indirect-buffer now runs the clone-indirect-buffer-hook.
1881
1882** `beginning-of-defun-function' now takes one argument, the count given to
1883`beginning-of-defun'. (N.B. `end-of-defun-function' doesn't take any
1884arguments.)
1885
1886** `file-remote-p' has new optional parameters IDENTIFICATION and CONNECTED.
1887IDENTIFICATION specifies which part of the remote identifier has to be
1888returned. With CONNECTED passed non-nil, it is checked whether a
1889remote connection has been established already.
1890
1891** The new macro `declare-function' suppresses compiler warnings about
1892undefined functions.
1893
1894** Changes to interactive function handling
1895
1896*** The new interactive spec code ^ says to first call
1897handle-shift-selection if shift-select-mode is non-nil, before reading
1898the command arguments. This is used for shift-selection (see above).
1899
1900*** Built-in functions can now have an interactive specification that
1901is not a prompt string. If the `intspec' parameter of a `DEFUN'
1902starts with a `(', the string is evaluated as a Lisp form.
1903
1904*** The interactive-form of a function can be added post-facto via the
1905`interactive-form' symbol property. Mostly useful to add complex
1906interactive forms to subroutines.
1907
1908** Region changes
1909
1910*** Commands should use `use-region-p' to test whether there is
1911an active region that they should operate on.
1912
1913*** `region-active-p' returns non-nil when Transient Mark mode is
1914enabled and the mark is active. Most commands that act specially on
1915the active region in Transient Mark mode should use `use-region-p'
1916instead of `region-active-p', because `use-region-p' obeys the new
1917user option `use-empty-active-region' (see Editing Changes, above).
1918
1919*** If a command sets `transient-mark-mode' to (only . OLDVAL), that
1920means to activate transient-mark-mode temporarily, until the next
1921unshifted point motion command or mark deactivation. Afterwards,
1922reset transient-mark-mode to the value OLDVAL. The values `only' and
1923`identity', introduced in Emacs 22, are now deprecated.
1924
1925** Emacs session information
1926
1927*** The new variables `before-init-time' and `after-init-time' record the
1928value of `current-time' before and after Emacs loads the init files.
1929
1930*** The new function `emacs-uptime' returns the uptime of an Emacs instance.
1931
1932*** The new function `emacs-init-time' returns the duration of the
1933Emacs initialization.
1934
1935** Changes affecting display-buffer
1936
1937*** display-buffer tries to be smarter when splitting windows.
1938The new option split-window-preferred-function lets you specify your own
1939function to pop up new windows. Its default value split-window-sensibly
1940can split a window either vertically or horizontally, whichever seems
1941more suitable in the current configuration. You can tune the behavior
1942of split-window-sensibly by customizing split-height-threshold and the
1943new option split-width-threshold. Both options now take the value nil
1944to inhibit splitting in one direction. Setting split-width-threshold to
1945nil inhibits horizontal splitting and gets you the behavior of Emacs 22
1946in this respect. In any case, display-buffer may now split the largest
1947window vertically even when it is not as wide as the containing frame.
1948
1949*** If pop-up-frames has the value `graphic-only', display-buffer only
1950makes a separate frame on graphic displays.
1951
1952*** select-frame and set-frame-selected-window have a new optional
1953argument NORECORD. If non-nil, this will avoid messing with the order
1954of recently selected windows and the buffer list.
1955
1956** Window parameters can now be defined.
1957These are analogous to frame parameters, but are associated with
1958individual windows.
1959
1960*** The new functions window-parameters, window-parameter, and
1961set-window-parameter are used to query and set window parameters.
1962
1963** Minibuffer and completion changes
1964
1965*** A list of default values can be specified for the DEFAULT argument of
1966functions `read-from-minibuffer', `read-string', `read-command',
1967`read-variable', `read-buffer', `completing-read'. Elements of this list
1968are available for inserting into the minibuffer by typing `M-n'.
1969For empty input these functions return the first element of this list.
1970
1971*** New function `read-regexp' uses the regexp history and some useful
1972regexp defaults (string at point, last Isearch/replacement regexp/string)
1973via M-n when reading a regexp in the minibuffer.
1974
1975*** minibuffer-local-must-match-filename-map is now named
1976minibuffer-local-filename-must-match-map.
1977
1978*** The `require-match' argument to `completing-read' accepts the new
1979values `confirm-only' and `confirm-after-completion'.
1980
1981** Search and replacement changes
1982
1983*** The regexp form \(?<num>:<regexp>\) specifies the group number explicitly.
1984
1985*** New function `match-substitute-replacement' returns the result of
1986`replace-match' without actually using it in the buffer.
1987
1988*** The new variable `replace-search-function' determines the function
1989to use for searching in query-replace and replace-string. The
1990function it specifies is called by `perform-replace' when its 4th
1991argument is nil.
1992
1993*** The new variable `replace-re-search-function' determines the
1994function to use for searching in `query-replace-regexp',
1995`replace-regexp', `query-replace-regexp-eval', and
1996`map-query-replace-regexp'. The function it specifies is called by
1997`perform-replace' when its 4th argument is non-nil.
1998
1999*** New keymap `search-map' bound to `M-s' provides global bindings
2000for search related commands.
2001
2002*** New keymap `multi-query-replace-map' contains additonal keys bound
2003to `automatic-all' and `exit-current' for multi-buffer interactive replacement.
2004
2005*** The variable `inhibit-changing-match-data', if non-nil, prevents
2006the search and match primitives from changing the match data.
2007
2008*** New functions `word-search-forward-lax' and `word-search-backward-lax'.
2009These are like `word-search-forward and `word-search-backward', except
2010that the end of the search string need not match a word boundary,
2011unless it ends in whitespace.
2012
2013** File handling changes
2014
2015*** set-file-modes is now interactive and can take the mode value in
2016symbolic notation thanks to auxiliary functions.
2017
2018*** file-local-variables-alist stores an alist of file-local
2019variables defined in the current buffer.
2020
2021** Face-remapping
2022
2023*** Each face can be remapped to a different face definition using the
2024variable `face-remapping-alist'. This is an alist that maps faces to
2025replacement definitions (which can be face names, lists of face names,
2026or attribute/value plists. If this variable is buffer-local, the
2027remapping occurs only in that buffer.
2028
2029*** text-scale-mode remaps the default face to a larger or smaller
2030size in the current buffer. This feature is used by the Buffer Face
2031menu and the new `C-x C-+', `C-x C--', and `C-x C-0' commands (see
2032Editing Changes, above).
2033
2034*** New functions:
2035
2036**** `face-remap-add-relative' adds a face remapping entry to the
2037current buffer.
2038
2039**** ``face-remap-remove-relative' removes a face remapping entry from
2040the current buffer.
2041
2042**** `face-remap-reset-base' restores a face to its global definition.
2043
2044**** `face-remap-set-base' sets the base remapping of a face.
2045
2046** Process changes
2047
2048*** The new function `start-file-process' is similar to `start-process',
2049but obeys file handlers. The file handler is chosen based on
2050`default-directory'. The functions `start-file-process-shell-command'
2051and `process-file-shell-command' are also new; they call internally
2052`start-file-process' and `process-file', respectively.
2053
2054*** The new function `process-lines' executes an external program and
2055returns its output as a list of lines.
2056
2057** Character code, representation, and charset changes.
2058
2059*** In multibyte buffers and strings, characters are represented by
2060UTF-8 byte sequences. The character code space is now 0x0..0x3FFFFF
2061with no gap; code points 0x0..0x10FFFF are Unicode characters of the
2062same code points, while code points 0x3FFF80..0x3FFFFF are raw 8-bit
2063bytes.
2064
2065*** Generic characters no longer exist.
2066
2067*** The concept of a charset has changed. A single character may
2068belong to multiple charsets (e.g. a-grave, U+00E0, belongs to charsets
2069unicode, iso-8859-1, iso-8859-3, etc).
2070
2071**** The dimension of a charset is now 1, 2, 3, or 4, and the size of
2072each dimension is no longer limited to 94 or 96.
2073
2074**** A dynamic charset priority list is used to infer the charset of
2075characters for display.
2076
2077*** The functions `split-char' and `make-char' now accept up to 4
2078positional codes instead of just 2.
2079
2080*** The functions `encode-char' and `decode-char' now accept any character sets.
2081
2082*** The function `define-charset' now accepts a completely different
2083form of arguments (old-style arguments still work).
2084
2085*** The value of the function `char-charset' depends on the current
2086priorities of charsets.
2087
2088*** The function get-char-code-property now accepts many Unicode base
2089character properties. They are `name', `general-category',
2090`canonical-combining-class', `bidi-class', `decomposition',
2091`decimal-digit-value', `digit-value', `numeric-value', `mirrored',
2092`old-name', `iso-10646-comment', `uppercase', `lowercase', and
2093`titlecase'.
2094
2095*** The functions `modify-syntax-entry' and `modify-category-entry' now
2096accept a cons of characters as the first argument, and modify all
2097entries in that range of characters.
2098
2099*** Use of `translation-table-for-input' for character code unification
2100is now obsolete, since Emacs 23.1 and later uses Unicode as basis for
2101internal representation of characters.
2102
2103*** New functions:
2104
2105**** `characterp' returns t if and only if the argument is a character.
2106This replaces `char-valid-p', which is now obsolete.
2107
2108**** `max-char' returns the maximum character code (currently #x3FFFFF).
2109
2110**** `define-charset-alias' defines an alias of a charset.
2111
2112**** `set-charset-priority' sets priorities of charsets.
2113
2114**** `charset-priority-list' returns a prioritized list of charsets.
2115
2116**** `unibyte-string' makes a unibyte string from bytes.
2117
2118**** `define-char-code-property' defines a character code property.
2119
2120**** `char-code-property-description' returns the description string of
2121a character code property.
2122
2123*** New variables:
2124
2125**** `find-word-boundary-function-table' is a char-table of functions to
2126search for a word boundary.
2127
2128**** `char-script-table' is a char-table of script names.
2129
2130**** `char-width-table' is a char-table of character widths.
2131
2132**** `print-charset-text-property' controls how to handle `charset' text
2133property on printing a string.
2134
2135**** `printable-chars' is a char-table of printable characters.
2136
2137** Code conversion changes
2138
2139*** The new function `define-coding-system' should be used to define a
2140coding system instead of `make-coding-system' (which is now obsolete).
2141
2142*** The functions `encode-coding-region' and `decode-coding-region'
2143have an optional 4th argument to specify where the result of
2144conversion should go.
2145
2146*** The functions `encode-coding-string' and `decode-coding-string'
2147have an optional 4th argument specifying a buffer to store the result
2148of conversion.
2149
2150*** The new variable `inhibit-null-byte-detection' controls whether to
2151consider text with null bytes as binary data. By default, it is
2152`nil', and Emacs uses `no-conversion' for any text containing null
2153bytes.
2154
2155*** The functions `set-coding-priority' and `make-coding-system' are obsolete.
2156
2157*** New functions:
2158
2159**** `with-coding-priority' executes Lisp code using the specified
2160coding system priority order.
2161
2162**** `check-coding-systems-region' checks if the text in the region is
2163encodable by the specified coding systems.
2164
2165**** `coding-system-aliases' returns a list of aliases of a coding system.
2166
2167**** `coding-system-charset-list' returns a list of charsets supported
2168by a coding system.
2169
2170**** `coding-system-priority-list' returns a list of coding systems
2171ordered by their priorities.
2172
2173**** `set-coding-system-priority' sets priorities of coding systems.
2174
2175**** `coding-system-from-name' returns a coding system matching with
2176the argument name.
2177
2178** There is a new input method, Robin, different from Quail.
2179It has three functionalities:
2180 i) a simple input method (converts an ASCII sequence into a string).
2181ii) converts an existing buffer substring into another string
2182iii) reverse conversion (each character produced by a
2183robin rule can hold the original ASCII sequence as a char-code-property)
2184
2185*** The new function `robin-define-package' defines a Robin package.
2186
2187*** The new function `robin-modify-package' modifies an existing Robin package.
2188
2189*** The new function `robin-use-package' starts using a Robin package
2190as an input method.
2191
2192*** The new function `string-to-unibyte' is like `string-as-unibyte'
2193but signals an error if STRING contains a non-ASCII, non-eight-bit
2194character.
2195
2196** Changes related to the new font backend
2197
2198*** Which font backends to use can be specified by the X resource
2199"FontBackend". For instance, to use both X core fonts and Xft fonts:
2200
2201Emacs.FontBackend: x,xft
2202
2203If this resource is not set, Emacs tries to use all font backends
2204available on your graphic device.
2205
2206*** New frame parameter `font-backend' specifies a list of
2207font-backends supported by the frame's graphic device. On X, they are
2208currently `x' and `xft'.
2209
2210*** The function `set-fontset-font' now accepts a script name as the
2211second argument, and has an optional 5th argument to control how to
2212set the font.
2213
2214*** New functions:
2215
2216**** `fontp' checks if the argument is a font-spec or font-entity.
2217
2218**** `font-spec' creates a new font-spec object.
2219
2220**** `font-get' returns a font property value.
2221
2222**** `font-put' sets a font property value.
2223
2224**** `font-face-attributes' returns a plist of face attributes set by a font.
2225
2226**** `list-fonts' returns a list of font-entities matching a font spec.
2227
2228**** `find-font' returns the font-entity best matching the given font spec.
2229
2230**** `font-family-list' returns a list of family names of available fonts.
2231
2232**** `font-xlfd-name' returns an XLFD name of a given font spec, font
2233entity, or font object.
2234
2235**** `clear-font-cache' clears all font caches.
2236
2237** Changes related to multiple-terminal (multi-tty) support
2238
2239*** $TERM is now set to `dumb' for subprocesses. If you want to know the
2240$TERM inherited by Emacs you will have to look inside initial-environment.
2241
2242*** $DISPLAY is now dynamically inherited from the frame's `display'.
2243
2244*** The `window-system' variable is now frame-local. The new
2245`initial-window-system' variable contains the `window-system' value
2246for the first frame. `window-system' is also now a function that
2247takes a frame argument.
2248
2249*** The `keyboard-translate-table' variable and the terminal and
2250keyboard coding systems are now terminal-local.
2251
2252*** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal
2253type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'.
2254
2255*** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a tty
2256session.
2257
2258*** A new `terminal' data type.
2259The functions `get-device-terminal', `terminal-parameters',
2260`terminal-parameter', `set-terminal-parameter' use this data type.
2261
2262*** Function key sequences are now mapped using `local-function-key-map',
2263a new variable. This inherits from the global variable function-key-map,
2264which is not used directly any more.
2265
2266*** New hooks:
2267
2268**** before-hack-local-variables-hook is called after setting new
2269variable file-local-variables-alist, and before actually applying the
2270file-local variables.
2271
2272**** `suspend-tty-functions' and `resume-tty-functions' are called
2273after a tty frame has been suspended or resumed, respectively. The
2274functions are called with the terminal id of the frame being
2275suspended/resumed as a parameter.
2276
2277**** The special hook `delete-terminal-functions' is called before
2278deleting a terminal.
2279
2280*** New functions:
2281
2282**** `delete-terminal'
2283
2284**** `suspend-tty'
2285
2286**** `resume-tty'.
2287
2288*** `initial-environment' holds the environment inherited from Emacs's parent.
2289
2290** Redisplay changes
2291
2292*** For underlined characters, the distance between the underline and
2293the baseline is controlled by a new variable, `underline-minimum-offset'.
2294
2295*** You can now pass the value of the `invisible' property to
2296invisible-p to check whether it would cause the text to be invisible.
2297This is convenient when checking invisibility of text with no buffer
2298position (e.g. in before/after-strings).
2299
2300*** `clear-image-cache' can be told to flush only images of a specific file.
2301
2302*** `vertical-motion' can now be given a goal column.
2303It now accepts a cons cell (COLS . LINES) in its first argument, which
2304says to stop, where possible, at a pixel x-position equal to COLS
2305times the default column width.
2306
2307*** redisplay-end-trigger-functions, set-window-redisplay-end-trigger,
2308and window-redisplay-end-trigger are obsolete. Use `jit-lock-register'
2309instead.
2310
2311*** The new variables `wrap-prefix' and `line-prefix' specify display
2312specs which are appended at display-time to every continuation line
2313and non-continuation line, respectively. In addition, Emacs
2314recognizes the `wrap-prefix' and `line-prefix' text or overlay
2315properties; these have the same effects as the variables of the same
2316name, but take precedence.
2317
2318** The Lisp interpreter now treats non-breaking space as whitespace.
2319
2320** Miscellaneous new functions
2321
2322*** `apply-partially' performs a "curried" application of a function.
2323
2324*** `buffer-swap-text' swaps text between two buffers. This can be
2325useful for modes such as tar-mode, archive-mode, RMAIL.
2326
2327*** `combine-and-quote-strings' produces a single string from a list of strings
2328sticking a separator string in between each pair, and quoting those
2329strings that include the separator as their substring. Useful for
2330consing shell command lines from the individual arguments.
2331
2332*** `custom-note-var-changed' tells Custom to treat the change in a
2333certain variable as having been made within Custom.
2334
2335*** `face-all-attributes' returns an alist describing all the basic
2336attributes of a given face.
2337
2338*** `format-seconds' converts a number of seconds into a readable
2339string of days, hours, etc.
2340
2341*** `image-refresh' refreshes all images associated with a given image
2342specification.
2343
2344*** `locate-user-emacs-file' helps packages to select the appropriate
2345place to save user-specific files. It defaults to `user-emacs-directory'
2346unless the file already exists at $HOME.
2347
2348*** `read-color' reads a color name using the minibuffer.
2349
2350*** `read-shell-command' does what its name says, with completion. It
2351uses the minibuffer-local-shell-command-map for that.
2352
2353*** `split-string-and-unquote' splits a string into a list of substrings
2354on the boundaries of a given delimiter, and unquotes the substrings that
2355are quoted. Useful for taking apart shell commands.
2356
2357*** The two new functions `looking-at-p' and `string-match-p' can do
2358the same matching as `looking-at' and `string-match' without changing
2359the match data.
2360
2361*** The two new functions `make-serial-process' and
2362`serial-process-configure' provide a Lisp interface to the new serial
2363port support (see Emacs changes, above).
2364
2365** Miscellaneous new variables
2366
2367*** `auto-save-include-big-deletions', if non-nil, means auto-save is
2368not turned off automatically after a big deletion.
2369
2370*** `read-circle', if nil, disables the reading of recursive Lisp
2371structures using the #N= and #N# syntax.
2372
2373*** `this-command-keys-shift-translated' is non-nil if the key
2374sequence invoking the current command was found by shift-translation.
2375
2376*** `window-point-insertion-type' determines the insertion-type of the
2377marker used for window-point.
2378
2379*** bookmark provides `bookmark-make-record-function' so special major
2380modes like Info can teach bookmark.el how to save and restore the
2381relevant data.
2382
2383*** `fill-forward-paragraph-function' specifies which function the
2384filling code should use to find paragraph boundaries.
2385
2386\f
2387* New Packages for Lisp Programming in Emacs 23.1
2388
2389** The new package avl-tree.el deals with the AVL tree data structure.
2390
2391** The new package check-declare.el verifies the accuracy of
2392declare-function macros (see Lisp Changes, above).
2393
2394** find-cmd.el can build `find' commands using lisp syntax.
2395
2396** The package misearch.el has been added. It allows Isearch to search
2397through multiple buffers. A variable `multi-isearch-next-buffer-function'
2398defines the function to call to get the next buffer to search in the series
2399of multiple buffers. Top-level functions `multi-isearch-buffers',
2400`multi-isearch-buffers-regexp', `multi-isearch-files' and
2401`multi-isearch-files-regexp' accept a single argument that specifies
2402a list of buffers/files to search for a string/regexp.
2403
2404** The new major mode `special-mode' is intended as a parent for
2405major modes such as those that set the "'mode-class 'special" property.
2406
2407\f
2408----------------------------------------------------------------------
2409This file is part of GNU Emacs.
2410
2411GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2412it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2413the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2414(at your option) any later version.
2415
2416GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2417but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2418MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2419GNU General Public License for more details.
2420
2421You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2422along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2423
2424\f
2425Local variables:
2426mode: outline
2427paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
2428end:
2429
2430arch-tag: e759449d-88b3-4de4-9900-3a6c3dfa23e2