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1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999
2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3See the end for copying conditions.
4
5Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8\f
9* Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11** Faces and frame parameters.
12
13There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
14Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
15`scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
16`scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
17sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
18for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
19parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
20
21Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
22`default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
23`foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
24`default' face and vice versa.
25
26** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
27
28The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
29colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
30correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
31the screen gamma of a frame's display.
32
33PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
34in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
35color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
36
37The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
38`ScreenGamma'.
39
40** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
41
42The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
43Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
44oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
45of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
46the text.
47
48** Emacs has a new face implementation.
49
50The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
51font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
52height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
53These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
54specify a font.
55
56Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
57These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
58under Lisp changes, below.
59
60** New default font is Courier 12pt.
61
62** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
63its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
64it is hollow.
65
66** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
67truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
68foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
69customizing face `fringe'.
70
71** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
72can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
73
74** LessTif support.
75
76Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
77need a version 0.88.1 or later.
78
79** Toolkit scroll bars.
80
81Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
82LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
83configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
84bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
85bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
86Emacs.
87
88When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
89Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
90Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
91Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
92define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
93`s/freebsd.h' as an example.
94
95Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
96a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
97directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
98different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
99system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
100add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
101
102The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
103`float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
104This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
105image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
106Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
107
108** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
109
110When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
111widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
112Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
113
114** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
115
116When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
117whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
118defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
119highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
120displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
121whitespace.
122
123** Busy-cursor.
124
125Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
126display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
127
128** Blinking cursor
129
130M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
131terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
132and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
133the group `cursor'.
134
135** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
136
137This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
138generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
139See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
140details.
141
142Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
143have to do anything to activate it.
144
145** Tabs and variable-width text.
146
147Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
148defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
149independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
150Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
151
152** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
153
154*** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
155
156 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
157
158The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
159one.
160
161*** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
162Motif.
163
164** Hscrolling in C code.
165
166Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
167
168** Tool bar support.
169
170Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
171how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
172
173** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
174
175Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
176mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
177line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
178about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
179in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
180
181Currently, the following actions have been defined:
182
183- Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
184buffers.
185
186- Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
187M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
188
189- Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
190
191- Mouse-1 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
192toggles the read-only status.
193
194- Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
195
196** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
197
198When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
199from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialogs' is
200non-nil.
201
202** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
203
204Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
205Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
206the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
207italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
208Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
209attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
210
211** Sound support
212
213Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
214(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
215Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
216(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
217to enable sound support.
218
219** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
220the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
221forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
222value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
223users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
224even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
225
226The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
227
228** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
229
230As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
231drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
232`x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
233
234** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
235bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
236
237This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
238`indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
239variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
240
241** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
242
243When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
244value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
245number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
246fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
247
248When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
249value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
250number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
251fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
252
253** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
254notably at the end of lines.
255
256All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
257spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
258
259** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
260query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
261after each match to get the replacement text.
262
263** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
264
265If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
266longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
267on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
268by setting the following variable:
269
270- User option: max-mini-window-height
271
272Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
273fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
274specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
275
276Default is 0.25.
277
278** Changes to RefTeX mode
279
280*** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
281 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
282 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
283 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
284 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
285 can be edited from that buffer.
286
287*** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
288 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
289 `A' to use all marked entries).
290
291*** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
292 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
293
294*** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
295 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
296 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
297 been cited.
298
299** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
300has the following new features:
301
302*** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
303may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
304to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
305time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
306
307*** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
308feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
309file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
310compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
311pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
312defaults to 1.
313
314** Tooltips.
315
316Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
317mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
318can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
319
320Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
321variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
322the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
323tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
324
325** Customize changes
326
327*** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
328`State' menu to add comments.
329
330*** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
331Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
332default).
333
334** New features in evaluation commands
335
336The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
337modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
338print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
339customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
340eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
341
342** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
343To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
344modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
345start sequences.
346
347** Dired changes
348
349*** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
350command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
351is, delete only empty directories.
352
353*** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
354command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
355copy directories recursively.
356
357** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
358use the -f option when sending mail.
359
360** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
361selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
362
363** New modes and packages
364
365*** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
366
367*** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
368
369*** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
370
371*** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
372Pascal) language.
373
374*** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
375the text at point.
376
377*** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
378
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379*** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
380
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381*** whitespace.el ???
382
383** Withdrawn packages
384
385*** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
386functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
387\f
388* Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
389
390Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
391--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
392When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
393so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
394
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395** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
396because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
397
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398** New function `propertize'
399
400The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
401strings with text properties.
402
403- Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
404
405Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
406by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
407PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
408specified value of that property. Example:
409
410 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
411
412+++
413** push and pop macros.
414
415A simple version of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
416is now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
417as the place that holds the list to be changed.
418
419(push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
420(pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
421 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
422
423+++
424** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
425as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
426
427[:digit:] matches 0 through 9
428[:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
429[:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
430[:blank:] matches space and tab only
431[:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
432 space, and DEL.
433[:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
434 and DEL.
435[:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
436 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
437 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
438[:alpha:] matches letters.
439 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
440 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
441[:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
442[:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
443[:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
444[:punct:] matches punctuation.
445 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
446 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
447[:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
448[:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
449[:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
450
451+++
452** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
453
454The following functions are defined for hash tables:
455
456- Function: make-hash-table ARGS
457
458The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
459are optional. The following arguments are defined:
460
461:test TEST
462
463TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
464Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
465it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
466
467:size SIZE
468
469SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
470many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
471
472:rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
473
474REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
475full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
476size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
4771.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
478old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
479
480:rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
481
482THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
483hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
484(size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
485
486:weakness WEAK
487
488WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
489Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
490their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
491hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
492
493- Function: makehash &optional TEST
494
495Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
496
497- Function: hash-table-p TABLE
498
499Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
500
501- Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
502
503Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
504values are shared.
505
506- Function: hash-table-count TABLE
507
508Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
509
510- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
511
512Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
513
514- Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
515
516Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
517
518- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
519
520Returns the size of TABLE.
521
522- Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
523
524Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
525
526- Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
527
528Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
529
530- Function: clrhash TABLE
531
532Clear TABLE.
533
534- Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
535
536Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
537not found.
538
539- Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
540
541Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
542another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
543
544- Function: remhash KEY TABLE
545
546Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
547
548- Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
549
550Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
551arguments KEY and VALUE.
552
553- Function: sxhash OBJ
554
555Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
556
557- Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
558
559Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
560a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
561comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
562and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
563of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
564
565TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
566
567HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
568code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
569integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
570
571Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
572be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
573
574 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
575 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
576
577 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
578 (sxhash (upcase a)))
579
580 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
581 'case-fold-string-hash))
582
583 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
584
585+++
586** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
587
588It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
589circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
590a cons cell which is its own cdr.
591
592+++
593** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
594
595If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
596#N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
597
598You can also do several calls to print functions using a common
599set of #N= constructs; here is how.
600
601 (let ((print-circle t)
602 (print-continuous-numbering t)
603 print-number-table)
604 (print1 ...)
605 (print1 ...)
606 ...)
607
608+++
609** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
610t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
611specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
612is too short to reach that column.
613
614+++
615** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
616now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
617after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
618two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
619
620If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
621perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
622and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
623
624+++
625** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
626to specify which buffer to return the size of.
627
628+++
629** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
630calendar-move-hook after moving point.
631
632+++
633** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
634directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
635small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
636small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
637temporary-file-directory instead.
638
639+++
640** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
641the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
642`before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
643hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
644
645+++
646** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
647elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
648
649+++
650** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
651
652make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
653creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
654ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
655
656+++
657** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
658
659The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
660on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
661is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
662never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
663ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
664overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
665
666If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
667that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
668to get an error if the file exists at that time.
669The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
670
671+++
672** Function `format' now handles text properties.
673
674Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
675If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
676ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
677result string.
678
679Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
680string where arguments appear in the result string.
681
682Example:
683
684 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
685 (s2 "world"))
686 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
687 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
688 (format s1 s2)
689
690results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
691
692+++
693** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
694
695Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
696The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
697argument in it.
698
699 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
700 (arg "world"))
701 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
702 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
703 (message msg arg))
704
705+++
706** Sound support
707
708Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
709(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
710
711Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
712(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
713to enable sound support.
714
715Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
716list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
717when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
718functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
719sound to play, before playing the sound.
720
721The following sound properties are supported:
722
723- `:file FILE'
724
725FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
726searched relative to `data-directory'.
727
728- `:volume VOLUME'
729
730VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
7310..1. This property is optional.
732
733Other properties are ignored.
734
735** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
736\f
737* New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
738
739Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
740--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
741When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
742so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
743
744** New face implementation.
745
746Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
747font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
748
749+++
750*** New faces.
751
752Each face can specify the following display attributes:
753
754 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
755
756 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
757 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
758
759 3. Font height in 1/10pt
760
761 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
762
763 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
764
765 6. Foreground color.
766
767 7. Background color.
768
769 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
770
771 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
772
773 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
774
775 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
776
777 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
778 color.
779
780 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
781 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
782
783Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
784same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
785frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
786faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
787with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
788attributes mentioned above.
789
790There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
791definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
792created frames.
793
794A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
795have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
796`fully-specified'.
797
798+++
799*** Face merging.
800
801The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
802combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
803aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
804properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
805that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
806results in a fully-specified face.
807
808+++
809*** Face realization.
810
811After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
812merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
813realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
814available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
815face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
816cache of the frame on which it was realized.
817
818Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
819character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
820for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
821charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
822
823Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
824specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
825being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
826the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
827statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
828
829In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
830`char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
8310x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
832the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
833initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
834Emacs.
835
836Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
837`enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
838registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
839with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
840
841++++
842**** Clearing face caches.
843
844The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
845on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
846unused fonts.
847
848+++
849*** Font selection.
850
851Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
852given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
853for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
854
855If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
856pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
857family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
858property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
859an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
860
861Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
862against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
863match for the given face attributes in this font list.
864
865Font selection can be influenced by the user.
866
867The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
868attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
869face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
870names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
871that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
872width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
873to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
874
875Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
876specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
877face doesn't exist.
878
879+++
880**** Scalable fonts
881
882Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
883since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
884servers.
885
886To enable scalable font use, set the variable
887`scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means nver use
888scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
889Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
890scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
891that list. Example:
892
893 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
894
895allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
896
897+++
898*** Functions and variables related to font selection.
899
900- Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
901
902Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
903is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
904string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
905
906If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
907the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
908FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
909POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
910SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
911These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
912if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
913REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
914the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
915of the face font sort order.
916
917- Function: x-font-family-list
918
919Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
920omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
921(FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
922non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
923
924- Variable: font-list-limit
925
926Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
927won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
928matching font. The default is currently 100.
929
930+++
931*** Setting face attributes.
932
933For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
934with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
935implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
936`face-attribute'.
937
938Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
939symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
940
941The following attributes are recognized:
942
943`:family'
944
945VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
946or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
947and `?' are allowed.
948
949`:width'
950
951VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
952It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
953`condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
954`extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
955
956`:height'
957
958VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
9591/10 pt.
960
961`:weight'
962
963VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
964symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
965`semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
966
967`:slant'
968
969VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
970symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
971`reverse-oblique'.
972
973`:foreground', `:background'
974
975VALUE must be a color name, a string.
976
977`:underline'
978
979VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
980VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
981a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
982don't underline.
983
984`:overline'
985
986VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
987VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
988string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
989overline.
990
991`:strike-through'
992
993VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
994striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
995face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
996is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
997
998`:box'
999
1000VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1001around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1002VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1003of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1004and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1005VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1006:color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1007the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1008specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1009defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1010the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1011color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1012should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1013like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1014that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1015the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1016box.
1017
1018`:inverse-video'
1019
1020VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1021inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1022
1023`:stipple'
1024
1025If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1026The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1027searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1028HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1029is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1030explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1031
1032For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1033and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1034
1035`:font'
1036
1037Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1038XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1039is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1040versions of Emacs.
1041
1042For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1043be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1044must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1045
1046Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1047`defface'.
1048
1049*** Face attributes and X resources
1050
1051The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1052from X resources:
1053
1054 Face attribute X resource class
1055-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1056 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1057 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1058 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1059 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1060 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1061 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1062 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1063 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1064 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1065 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1066 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1067 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1068 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
1069 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
1070 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1071 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1072 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1073 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1074 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1075
1076+++
1077*** Text property `face'.
1078
1079The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1080specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1081specification can be
1082
10831. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1084
10852. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1086 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1087 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1088 for face attribute names.
1089
10903. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1091 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1092 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1093
1094+++
1095** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1096
1097The function `face-register-tty-color' can be used to define colors
1098for use on TTY frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the
1099terminal. Emacs defines a couple of default color mappings by
1100default. You can get defined colors with a call to
1101`tty-defined-colors'. The function `face-clear-tty-colors' can be
1102used to clear the mapping table.
1103
1104+++
1105** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
1106This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
1107
1108A number of functions such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
1109forward-paragraph, and beginning-of-line, stop moving when they
1110come to the boundary between the prompt and the actual contents.
1111The function erase-buffer does not delete the prompt.
1112
1113The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1114end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1115Otherwise, it returns zero.
1116
1117The function buffer-string does not return the portion of the
1118mini-buffer belonging to the prompt; buffer-substring does.
1119
1120+++
1121** Image support.
1122
1123Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
1124strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
1125(AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
1126replaces the display of the characters having that property.
1127
1128If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
1129`(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
1130AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
1131window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
1132area.
1133
1134IMAGE is an image specification.
1135
1136*** Image specifications
1137
1138Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
1139is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
1140specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
1141symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'.
1142
1143The following is a list of properties all image types share.
1144
1145`:ascent ASCENT'
1146
1147ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
1148of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
1149
1150`:margin MARGIN'
1151
1152MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
1153margin around the image. Default is 0.
1154
1155`:relief RELIEF'
1156
1157RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
1158around an image.
1159
1160`:algorithm ALGO'
1161
1162Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
1163be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
1164supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
1165which is intended to display images "disabled."
1166
1167`:heuristic-mask BG'
1168
1169If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
1170background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
1171determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
1172corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
1173the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
1174be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
1175background of the image.
1176
1177`:file FILE'
1178
1179Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
1180search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
1181building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
1182may be present in the image specification.
1183
1184
1185*** Supported image types
1186
1187**** XBM, iamge type `xbm'.
1188
1189XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
1190properties supported are
1191
1192`:foreground FG'
1193
1194FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
1195is the frame's foreground.
1196
1197`:background FG'
1198
1199BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
1200the frame's background color.
1201
1202XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
1203case, the image specification must contain the following properties
1204instead of a `:file' property.
1205
1206`:width WIDTH'
1207
1208WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
1209
1210`:height HEIGHT'
1211
1212HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
1213
1214`:data DATA'
1215
1216DATA must be either
1217
1218 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
1219 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
1220
1221 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
1222
1223 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
1224 bitmap.
1225
1226**** XPM, image type `xpm'
1227
1228XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
1229`xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
1230found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
1231`--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
1232
1233Additional image properties supported are:
1234
1235`:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
1236
1237SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
1238name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
1239name.
1240
1241XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
1242add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
1243
1244`:data DATA'
1245
1246DATA must be a string containing an XPM image. The contents of the
1247string are of the same format as that of XPM files.
1248
1249The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
1250to display compressed images.
1251
1252**** PBM, image type `pbm'
1253
1254PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
1255mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
1256defined.
1257
1258**** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
1259
1260Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
1261package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1262properties defined.
1263
1264**** TIFF, image type `tiff'
1265
1266Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
1267package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1268properties defined.
1269
1270**** GIF, image type `gif'
1271
1272Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
1273`libungif-4.1.0', or later.
1274
1275Additional image properties supported are:
1276
1277`:index INDEX'
1278
1279INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
1280multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
1281
1282This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
1283For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
1284at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
1285every 0.1 seconds.
1286
1287(defun show-anim (file max)
1288 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
1289 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
1290
1291(defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
1292 (when (= idx max)
1293 (setq idx 0))
1294 (let ((img (create-image file nil :index idx)))
1295 (save-excursion
1296 (set-buffer buffer)
1297 (goto-char (point-min))
1298 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
1299 (insert-image img "x"))
1300 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
1301
1302**** PNG, image type `png'
1303
1304Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
1305package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1306properties defined.
1307
1308**** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
1309
1310Additional image properties supported are:
1311
1312`:pt-width WIDTH'
1313
1314WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
1315integer. This is an required property.
1316
1317`:pt-height HEIGHT'
1318
1319HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
1320must be an integer. This is an required property.
1321
1322`:bounding-box BOX'
1323
1324BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
1325the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
1326files. This is an required property.
1327
1328Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
1329lisp/gs.el.
1330
1331*** Lisp interface.
1332
1333The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
1334which are supported in the current configuration.
1335
1336Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
1337they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
1338The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
1339manually.
1340
1341*** Simplified image API, image.el
1342
1343The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
1344creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
1345can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
1346define an image based on available image types. The functions
1347`put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
1348buffer.
1349
1350+++
1351** Display margins.
1352
1353Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
1354and images.
1355
1356To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
1357`left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
1358`set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
1359obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
1360`right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
1361the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
1362of the display margins.
1363
1364You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
1365containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
1366one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
1367string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
1368in this file).
1369
1370+++
1371** Help display
1372
1373Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
1374moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
1375`help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
1376that have a `help-echo' property.
1377
1378The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
1379items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
1380If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
1381evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
1382tool-bar item is used.
1383
1384The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
1385help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
1386help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
1387
1388+++
1389** Vertical fractional scrolling.
1390
1391The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
1392This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
1393
1394The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
1395scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
1396The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
1397scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
1398used.
1399
1400 (global-set-key [A-down]
1401 #'(lambda ()
1402 (interactive)
1403 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1404 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
1405 (global-set-key [A-up]
1406 #'(lambda ()
1407 (interactive)
1408 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1409 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
1410
1411+++
1412** New hook `fontification-functions'.
1413
1414Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
1415when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
1416variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
1417is called with one argument, POS.
1418
1419At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
1420characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
1421as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
1422property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
1423`fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
1424
1425+++
1426** Tool bar support.
1427
1428Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
1429parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
1430controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
1431suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
1432`auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
1433automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
1434
1435*** Tool bar item definitions
1436
1437Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
1438`tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
1439where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
1440
1441CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
1442evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
1443the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
1444property (see below).
1445
1446BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
1447binding are currently ignored.
1448
1449The following properties are recognized:
1450
1451`:enable FORM'.
1452
1453FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
1454or disabled.
1455
1456`:visible FORM'
1457
1458FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
1459
1460`:filter FUNCTION'
1461
1462FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
1463FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
1464used instead of BINDING to display this item.
1465
1466`:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
1467
1468TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
1469and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
1470
1471`:image IMAGES'
1472
1473IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
1474image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
1475meaning of each of the four elements:
1476
1477 Index Use when item is
1478 ----------------------------------------
1479 0 enabled and selected
1480 1 enabled and deselected
1481 2 disabled and selected
1482 3 disabled and deselected
1483
1484`:help HELP-STRING'.
1485
1486Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
1487is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
1488
1489*** Tool-bar-related variables.
1490
1491If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
1492resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
1493than 1/4 of the frame's size.
1494
1495If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
1496raised when the mouse moves over them.
1497
1498You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
1499`tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
1500pixels. Default is 1.
1501
1502You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
1503`tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
1504
1505*** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
1506
1507You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
1508a tool bar item. If
1509
1510 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
1511 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
1512 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
1513
1514is the original tool bar item definition, then
1515
1516 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
1517
1518makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
1519item.
1520
1521** Mode line changes.
1522
1523+++
1524*** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
1525
1526The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
1527that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
1528a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
1529
15301. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
1531a `local-map' text property.
1532
15332. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
1534that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
1535
15363. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
1537is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
1538`local-map' property.
1539
1540The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
1541properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
1542example.
1543
1544+++
1545*** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
1546variable mode-line-format to nil.
1547
1548+++
1549*** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
1550
1551This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
1552`header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
1553completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
1554`default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
1555line.
1556
1557The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
1558`header-line'.
1559
1560The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
1561position in the header-line.
1562
1563+++
1564** Text property `display'
1565
1566The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
1567also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
1568`display' property should be a display specification, as described
1569below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
1570
1571*** Variable width and height spaces
1572
1573To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
1574specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
1575`(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
1576area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
1577marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
1578displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
1579simpler form STRETCH as property value.
1580
1581The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
1582PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
1583properties described below.
1584
1585The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
1586characters having the `display' property.
1587
1588- :width WIDTH
1589
1590Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
1591character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
1592
1593- :relative-width FACTOR
1594
1595Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
1596first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
1597same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
1598width of that character by FACTOR.
1599
1600- :align-to HPOS
1601
1602Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
1603value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
1604
1605Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
1606
1607- :height HEIGHT
1608
1609Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
1610normal line height.
1611
1612- :relative-height FACTOR
1613
1614The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
1615of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
1616
1617- :ascent ASCENT
1618
1619Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
1620used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
1621baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
1622equal to 100.
1623
1624You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
1625
1626*** Images
1627
1628A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
1629. IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
1630in the display, the characters having this display specification in
1631their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
1632the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
1633`(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
1634area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
1635the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
1636as display specification.
1637
1638*** Other display properties
1639
1640- :space-width FACTOR
1641
1642Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
1643should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
1644integer or float.
1645
1646- :height HEIGHT
1647
1648Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
1649
1650If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
1651means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
1652the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
1653``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
1654a font is available counts as a step.
1655
1656If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
1657as tall as the frame's default font.
1658
1659If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
1660height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
1661
1662Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
1663`height' bound to the current specified font height.
1664
1665- :raise FACTOR
1666
1667FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
1668font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
1669raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
1670amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
1671`:height' subproperty.
1672
1673*** Conditional display properties
1674
1675All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
1676has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
1677applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
1678During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
1679the text having the `display' property.
1680
1681The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
1682`(:when t SPEC)'.
1683
1684+++
1685** New menu separator types.
1686
1687Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
1688item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
1689treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
1690to specify other menu separator types.
1691
1692- `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
1693
1694No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
1695separator occurs.
1696
1697- `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
1698
1699A single line in the menu's foreground color.
1700
1701- `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
1702
1703A double line in the menu's foreground color.
1704
1705- `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
1706
1707A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1708
1709- `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
1710
1711A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1712
1713- `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
1714
1715A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
1716displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
1717
1718- `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
1719
1720A single line with 3D raised appearance.
1721
1722- `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
1723
1724A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
1725
1726- `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
1727
1728A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
1729
1730- `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
1731
1732Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1733
1734- `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
1735
1736Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
1737
1738- `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
1739
1740Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1741
1742- `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
1743
1744Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
1745
1746Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
1747the corresponding single-line separators.
1748
1749+++
1750** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
1751
1752The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
1753`scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
1754Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
1755that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
1756default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
1757default background is the background color of the frame, and the
1758default foreground is black.
1759
1760The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
1761(class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
1762`ScrollBarBackground').
1763
1764Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
1765settings for scroll bar colors.
1766
1767+++
1768** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
1769display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
1770
1771---
1772** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
1773starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
1774on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
1775line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
1776the original window start.
1777
1778---
1779** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
1780`hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
1781now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
1782
1783+++
1784** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
1785
1786A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
1787`window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
1788windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
1789other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
1790
1791The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
1792fixed-width and fixed-height.
1793
1794 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
1795
1796A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
1797fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
1798window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
1799change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
1800temporarily to nil, for example
1801
1802 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
1803 (enlarge-window 10))
1804
1805Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
1806or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
1807\f
1808* Changes in Emacs 20.4
1809
1810** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
1811
1812You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
1813Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
1814`.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
1815
1816If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
1817is the one that is used.
1818
1819** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
1820the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
1821Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
1822separate from the command's regular output.
1823Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
1824says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
1825In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
1826the buffer name.
1827
1828When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
1829output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
1830it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
1831cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
1832
1833** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
1834the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
1835is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
1836created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
1837
1838** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
1839example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
1840match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
1841quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
1842
1843** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
1844now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
1845if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
1846they never ignore case.
1847
1848** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
1849under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
1850applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
1851of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
1852just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
1853convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
1854part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
1855
1856If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
1857the same format that was used in the file before.
1858
1859You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
1860`inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
1861
1862** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
1863renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
1864This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
1865
1866** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
1867The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
1868buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
1869your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
1870is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
1871end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
1872Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
1873
1874The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
1875eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
1876control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
1877format. You can now customize these variables.
1878
1879** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
1880filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
1881filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
1882enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
1883
1884** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
1885in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
1886windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
1887
1888** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
1889dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
1890doesn't have any effect.
1891
1892** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
1893not one per buffer.
1894
1895** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
1896use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
1897 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
1898
1899** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
1900To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
1901`auto-show-mode' command.
1902
1903** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
1904avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
1905versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
1906choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
1907occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
1908
1909** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
1910cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
1911
1912** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
1913character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
1914feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
1915
1916** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
1917the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
1918interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
1919and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
1920
1921** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
1922
1923The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
1924that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
1925one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
1926codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
1927set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
1928
1929Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
1930from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
1931
1932IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
1933equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
1934a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
1935`?' on other systems.
1936
1937IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
1938feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
1939Unix.
1940
1941Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
1942current codepage when it starts.
1943
1944** Mail changes
1945
1946*** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
1947default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
1948default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
1949sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
1950buffer-file-coding-system.
1951
1952You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
1953sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
1954mail.
1955
1956*** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
1957if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
1958Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
1959list of possible coding systems.
1960
1961** CC Mode changes
1962
1963*** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
1964modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
1965longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
1966docstring for details.
1967
1968*** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
1969symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
1970found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
1971prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
1972lineup functions use this feature currently.
1973
1974*** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
1975"finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
1976
1977*** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
1978"catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
1979
1980*** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
1981from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
1982symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
1983c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
1984anonymous classes.
1985
1986*** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
1987syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
1988
1989*** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
1990inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
1991support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
1992function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
1993
1994*** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
1995(i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
1996brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
1997c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
1998(brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
1999
2000*** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2001
2002*** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2003
2004*** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2005for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2006
2007*** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2008
2009*** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2010associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2011This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2012circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2013class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2014
2015** Gnus changes.
2016
2017*** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2018added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2019Gnus manual for the full story.
2020
2021*** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2022before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2023group, which is created automatically.
2024
2025*** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2026values.
2027
2028*** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2029
2030*** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2031outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2032
2033*** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2034`C-u C-c C-c'.
2035
2036*** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2037
2038*** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2039re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2040
2041*** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2042
2043*** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2044Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2045
2046*** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2047`a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2048
2049*** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2050control over simplification.
2051
2052*** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2053
2054*** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2055limit.
2056
2057*** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2058
2059*** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2060
2061*** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
2062If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2063rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2064
2065*** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2066`a' forces normal posting method.
2067
2068*** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2069-- `W d'.
2070
2071*** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2072to a non-nil value.
2073
2074*** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2075where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2076
2077*** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2078has been added.
2079
2080*** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2081
2082*** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2083
2084*** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2085`gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2086
2087*** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2088`message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2089
2090*** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
2091
2092*** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
2093been added.
2094
2095*** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
2096`gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
2097
2098*** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
2099updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
2100
2101*** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
2102
2103*** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
2104
2105*** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
2106
2107** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
2108
2109*** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
2110options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
2111nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
2112
2113*** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
2114TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
2115of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
2116TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
2117can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
2118
2119*** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
2120All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
2121but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
2122the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
2123
2124*** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
2125the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
2126buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
2127mismatch.
2128
2129** Changes to RefTeX mode
2130
2131*** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
2132file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
2133
2134*** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
2135lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
2136characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
2137removed from the label.
2138
2139*** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
2140a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
2141
2142*** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
2143customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
2144
2145*** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
2146`reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
2147expressions.
2148
2149*** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
2150
2151** New/deleted modes and packages
2152
2153*** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
2154SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
2155
2156*** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
2157editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
2158SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
2159
2160*** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
2161changes with a special face.
2162
2163*** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
2164this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
2165Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
2166\f
2167* MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
2168
2169** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
2170This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
2171conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
2172and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
2173check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
2174
2175The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
2176Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
2177distribution when the config.bat script is run.
2178
2179** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
2180MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
2181controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
2182directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
2183Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
2184on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
2185string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
2186program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
2187printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
2188
2189** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
2190output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
2191available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
2192input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
2193temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
2194program.
2195
2196An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
2197and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
2198programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
2199automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
2200as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
2201ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
2202
2203** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
2204a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
2205MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
2206was not documented clearly before.
2207
2208** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
2209This includes Tetris and Snake.
2210\f
2211* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
2212
2213** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
2214return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
2215They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
2216meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
2217
2218** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
2219WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
2220and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
2221
2222** Changes in the file-attributes function.
2223
2224*** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
2225It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
2226
2227*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
2228the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
2229integers.
2230
2231** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
2232files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
2233arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
2234file names and attributes are returned.
2235
2236** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
2237sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
2238accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
2239It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
2240returns the result.
2241
2242** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
2243to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
2244
2245** New functions for base64 conversion:
2246
2247The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
2248into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
2249performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
2250optionally.
2251
2252Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
2253job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
2254
2255**
2256The new function process-running-child-p
2257will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
2258terminal to its own child process.
2259
2260** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
2261when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
2262to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
2263itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
2264
2265** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
2266be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
2267
2268** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
2269:included is an alias for :visible.
2270
2271easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
2272easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
2273to move or copy menu entries.
2274
2275** Multibyte editing changes
2276
2277*** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
2278an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
2279make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
2280work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
2281char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
2282 (setq char (sref str idx)
2283 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
2284The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
2285
2286If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
2287(say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
2288 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
2289
2290*** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
2291region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
2292deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
2293
2294 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
2295
2296This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
2297across the boundary.
2298
2299*** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
2300`unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
2301 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
2302 contains 8-bit characters.
2303 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
2304 contains invalid characters.
2305
2306*** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
2307text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
2308preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
2309text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
2310way.
2311
2312*** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
2313If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
2314end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
2315prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
2316
2317*** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
2318compose Thai characters in a string.
2319
2320** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
2321argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
2322for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
2323menus should always use the third argument.
2324
2325** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
2326read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
2327arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
2328input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
2329
2330** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
2331of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
2332programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
2333inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
2334
2335** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
2336the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
2337returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
2338echo area contents.
2339
2340 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
2341
2342** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
2343NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
2344requested feature cannot be loaded.
2345
2346** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
2347foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
2348means to clear out that attribute.
2349
2350** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
2351gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
2352
2353** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
2354read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
2355unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
2356end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
2357
2358** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
2359the gap of the current buffer.
2360
2361** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
2362to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
2363current buffer.
2364
2365** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
2366facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
2367These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
2368it back in after any modifications have been made.
2369\f
2370* Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
2371
2372** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
2373the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
2374/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
2375directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
2376subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
2377
2378Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
2379names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
2380Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
2381which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
2382these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
2383
2384Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
2385starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
2386time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
2387
2388This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
2389Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
2390to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
2391subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
2392`.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
2393results.
2394
2395** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
2396GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
2397that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
2398fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
2399\f
2400* Changes in Emacs 20.3
2401
2402** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
2403including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
2404it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
2405perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
2406
2407** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
2408specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
2409region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
2410further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
2411command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
2412within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
2413are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
2414region.
2415
2416In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
2417selective undo.
2418
2419** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
2420unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
2421buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
2422effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
2423Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
2424
2425The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
2426though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
2427-*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
2428load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
2429
2430** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
2431no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
2432enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
2433something that most users not do.
2434
2435** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
2436operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
2437The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
2438applications.
2439
2440C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
2441pasting operations.
2442
2443** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
2444setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
2445like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
2446printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
2447`ps-printer-name'.
2448
2449** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
2450minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
2451any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
2452except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
2453incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
2454hits a new word.
2455
2456Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
2457Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
2458to be confused by TeX commands.
2459
2460You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
2461correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
2462clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
2463of various alternative replacements and actions.
2464
2465Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
2466the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
2467corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
2468alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
2469flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
2470
2471Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
2472flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
2473
2474** Changes in input method usage.
2475
2476Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
2477the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
2478respectively.
2479
2480You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
2481
2482If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
2483of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
2484
2485The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
2486that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
2487
2488 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
2489
2490 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
2491
2492 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
2493 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
2494
2495 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
2496 given in the following case:
2497 o When you are using a complex input method.
2498 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
2499
2500If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
2501input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
2502and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
2503setting it to t is helpful.
2504
2505The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
2506
2507In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
2508keys:
2509 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
2510 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
2511 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
2512These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
2513environment.
2514
2515** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
2516names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
2517minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
2518get
2519
2520 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
2521
2522which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
2523
2524Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
2525Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
2526
2527** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
2528at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
2529its owner and group.
2530
2531** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
2532Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
2533
2534** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
2535contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
2536
2537** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
2538which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
2539in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
2540by the left edge of the rectangle.
2541
2542** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
2543increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
2544C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
2545for writing keyboard macros.
2546
2547** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
2548files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
2549frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
2550the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
2551additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
2552info.
2553
2554** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
2555
2556** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
2557query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
2558contents only.
2559
2560** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
2561confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
2562the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
2563says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
2564
2565** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
2566non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
2567literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
2568
2569** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
2570now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
2571Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
2572inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
2573
2574** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
2575failure if the command produces no output.
2576
2577** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
2578manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
2579the mouse.
2580
2581** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
2582mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
2583function and variable names.
2584
2585** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
2586reading specific files. This has higher priority than
2587file-coding-system-alist.
2588
2589** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
2590t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
2591converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
2592the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
2593according to the current fontset.
2594
2595** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
2596
2597The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
2598that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
2599nonascii-insert-offset.
2600
2601For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
2602enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
2603nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
2604characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
2605
2606** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
2607an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
2608
2609** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
2610letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
2611
2612** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
2613are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
2614command keys.
2615
2616** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
2617user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
2618
2619Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
2620user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
2621all variables that have documentation.
2622
2623** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
2624shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
2625that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
2626minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
2627it should show; the default is 20.
2628
2629Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
2630the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
2631of your input.
2632
2633** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
2634all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
2635recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
2636argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
2637the customizable options which were changed since that version.
2638Newly added options are included as well.
2639
2640If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
2641then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
2642for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
2643
2644This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
2645Customize menu.
2646
2647** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
2648the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
2649
2650** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
2651buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
2652invoked.
2653
2654** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
2655that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
2656The default is 1.
2657
2658** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
2659syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
2660new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
2661(C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
2662sensibly.
2663
2664** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
2665
2666** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
2667value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
2668two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
2669
2670** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
2671reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
2672for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
2673every night.
2674
2675** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
2676the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
2677
2678** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
2679read and post multi-lingual articles.
2680
2681** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
2682doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
2683be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
2684outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
2685the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
2686made invisible again.
2687
2688** Mail reading and sending changes
2689
2690*** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
2691the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
2692changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
2693toggle.
2694
2695*** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
2696now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
2697summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
2698the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
2699rmail-default-body-file.
2700
2701*** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
2702longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
2703handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
2704
2705*** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
2706it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
2707is evaluated to insert the signature.
2708
2709*** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
2710outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
2711handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
2712putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
2713transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
2714especially interested in trying feedmail.
2715
2716feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
2717feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
2718provided by feedmail are:
2719
2720**** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
2721stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
2722there is also a queue for draft messages
2723
2724**** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
2725be prompted for confirmation
2726
2727**** does smart filling of address headers
2728
2729**** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
2730the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
2731can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
2732
2733**** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
2734the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
2735/usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
2736function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
2737
2738** Dired changes
2739
2740*** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
2741files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
2742
2743*** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
2744run Dired on the directory name at point.
2745
2746*** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
2747files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
2748for a specified regexp.
2749
2750** VC Changes
2751
2752*** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
2753conveniently.
2754
2755*** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
2756faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
2757Dired.
2758
2759VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
2760directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
2761listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
2762currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
2763
2764You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
2765then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
2766vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
2767control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
2768on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
2769
2770All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
2771is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
2772`v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
2773the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
2774`vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
2775
2776The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
2777toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
2778VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
2779`* l', to mark all files currently locked.
2780
2781Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
2782ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
2783command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
2784
2785*** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
2786file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
2787session to resolve them.
2788
2789Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
2790resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
2791contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
2792uses as well).
2793
2794*** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
2795command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
2796you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
2797either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
2798branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
2799If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
2800using ediff.
2801
2802** Changes in Font Lock
2803
2804*** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
2805are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
2806use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
2807unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
2808compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
2809
2810** Frame name display changes
2811
2812*** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
2813frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
2814raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
2815when many frames are invisible or iconified.
2816
2817*** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
2818frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
2819menu.
2820
2821** Comint (subshell) changes
2822
2823*** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
2824subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
2825with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
2826
2827*** There are new commands in Comint mode.
2828
2829C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
2830that is, the line after the last line you got.
2831You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
2832
2833C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
2834send the current line together with the following line, when you send
2835the following line.
2836
2837C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
2838which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
2839previously sent input.
2840
2841C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
2842it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
2843as the search string.
2844
2845*** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
2846automatically in compilation-mode windows.
2847
2848** C mode changes
2849
2850*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
2851and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
2852assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
2853definition.
2854
2855*** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
2856(i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
2857Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
2858style is still the default however.
2859
2860*** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
2861
2862*** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
2863are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
2864them. They do not have key bindings by default.
2865
2866*** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
2867and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
2868
2869*** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
2870namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
2871
2872*** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
2873makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
2874
2875*** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
2876c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
2877
2878*** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
2879should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
2880package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
2881variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
2882
2883** Changes to hippie-expand.
2884
2885*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
2886non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
2887which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
2888
2889*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
2890non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
2891expanding dynamically.
2892
2893*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
2894non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
2895
2896*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
2897non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
2898this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
2899expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
2900
2901*** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
2902
2903** Changes in BibTeX mode.
2904
2905*** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
2906bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
2907automatic key generation. This replaces variable
2908bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
2909against the first word in the title.
2910
2911*** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
2912capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
2913bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
2914lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
2915lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
2916bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
2917
2918*** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
2919generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
2920replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
2921bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
2922
2923** Changes in vcursor.el.
2924
2925*** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
2926and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
2927variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
2928entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
2929`vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
2930in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
2931
2932*** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
2933Editing group once the package is loaded.
2934
2935*** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
2936generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
2937vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
2938
2939*** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
2940vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
2941
2942** Ispell changes.
2943
2944*** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
2945buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
2946are identified by syntax tables in effect.
2947
2948*** Generic region skipping implemented.
2949A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
2950and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
2951defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
2952include:
2953
2954 o URLs are automatically skipped
2955 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
2956
2957*** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
2958
2959** Changes to RefTeX mode
2960
2961RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
2962large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
2963re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
2964section `Optimizations' in the manual.
2965
2966*** New recursive parser.
2967
2968The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
2969entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
2970recursive parser scans the individual files.
2971
2972*** Parsing only part of a document.
2973
2974Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
2975partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
2976the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
2977
2978 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
2979
2980*** Storing parsing information in a file.
2981
2982This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
2983
2984 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
2985
2986*** Using multiple selection buffers
2987
2988If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
2989for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
2990
2991 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
2992
2993*** References to external documents.
2994
2995The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
2996documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
2997documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
2998macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
2999RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3000the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3001The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3002
3003*** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3004
3005The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3006and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3007
3008Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3009the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3010
3011*** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3012
3013The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3014buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3015
3016*** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3017
3018The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3019contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3020`reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3021have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3022enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3023at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3024more.
3025
3026*** Support for the varioref package
3027
3028The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3029
3030*** New hooks
3031
3032Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3033and citations are created. These hooks are
3034`reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3035`reftex-format-cite-function'.
3036
3037*** Citations outside LaTeX
3038
3039The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3040a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3041
3042*** Short context is no longer fontified.
3043
3044The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3045fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3046fontified, use
3047
3048 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3049
3050** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3051With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3052the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3053directories that contain the same file name.
3054
3055Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3056Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3057file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3058Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3059have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3060names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3061directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3062directory.
3063
3064** New modes and packages
3065
3066*** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3067It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3068it, but some do not.
3069
3070*** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3071code.
3072
3073*** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3074current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3075around in a buffer.
3076
3077Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3078
3079*** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3080uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3081be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3082established system of notation similar to Chess.
3083
3084*** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3085documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3086guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3087
3088*** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3089available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
3090system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
3091simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
3092functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
3093the like.
3094
3095*** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
3096identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
3097
3098*** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
3099within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
3100used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
3101the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
3102
3103*** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
3104
3105 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
3106 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
3107 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
3108 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
3109 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
3110 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
3111 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
3112 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
3113 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
3114 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
3115 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
3116
3117 Platform-specific modes:
3118
3119 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
3120 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
3121 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
3122 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
3123 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
3124 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
3125 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
3126 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
3127 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
3128\f
3129* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3130
3131** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
3132use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
3133That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
3134Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
3135
3136Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
3137you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
3138consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
3139
3140** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
3141and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
3142specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
3143searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
3144
3145** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
3146multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
3147character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
3148environment.
3149
3150** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
3151take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
3152string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
3153current input method for reading this one event.
3154
3155** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
3156now control whether to output certain characters as
3157backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
3158non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
3159characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
3160in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
3161\f
3162* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3163
3164** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
3165of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
3166
3167** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
3168in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
3169always increases point by 1.
3170
3171The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
3172considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
3173
3174See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
3175
3176** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
3177Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
3178default value changed. For example,
3179
3180 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
3181 :type 'integer
3182 :group 'foo
3183 :version "20.3")
3184
3185 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
3186 :version "20.3")
3187
3188If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
3189default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
3190is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
3191`:version' in the top level group.
3192
3193This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
3194
3195** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
3196starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
3197
3198However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
3199symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
3200support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
3201to themselves.
3202
3203If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
3204this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
3205values whatever.
3206
3207** There is a new debugger command, R.
3208It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
3209in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
3210
3211** Frame-local variables.
3212
3213You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
3214the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
3215local bindings for that variable.
3216
3217These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
3218frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
3219modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
3220parameter name.
3221
3222Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
3223Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
3224active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
3225that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
3226
3227It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
3228clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
3229very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
3230through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
3231
3232** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
3233"symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
3234evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
3235makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
3236See the documentation in sregex.el.
3237
3238** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
3239is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
3240parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
3241The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
3242
3243** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
3244If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
3245
3246** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
3247known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
3248define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
3249
3250** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
3251when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
3252it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
3253history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
3254
3255The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
3256return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
3257empty input.
3258
3259** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
3260for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
3261`iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
3262Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
3263`read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
3264
3265** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
3266echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
3267a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
3268default password to use if the user enters nothing.
3269
3270** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
3271specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
3272function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
3273place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
3274non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
3275
3276** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
3277If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
3278up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
3279end of the window, even if this requires computation.
3280
3281** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
3282which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
3283If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
3284
3285** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
3286holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
3287was directed to display this buffer.
3288
3289** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
3290with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
3291describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
3292other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
3293set-window-configuration.
3294
3295** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
3296window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
3297positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
3298windows and the choice of buffers to display.
3299
3300** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
3301override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
3302look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
3303
3304If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
3305non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
3306map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
3307
3308minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
3309and it is meant to be set by major modes.
3310
3311** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
3312except that it discards all text properties from the result.
3313
3314** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
3315USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
3316floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
3317
3318** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
3319to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
3320in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
3321it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
3322
3323** Menu changes
3324
3325*** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
3326keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
3327better supported.
3328
3329The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
3330a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
3331you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
3332can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
3333then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
3334
3335*** A new format for menu items is supported.
3336
3337In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
3338 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
3339defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
3340starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
3341
3342The format is:
3343 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
3344 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
3345where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
3346string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
3347The supported properties include
3348
3349:enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3350 item is enabled.
3351:visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3352 item should appear in the menu.
3353:filter FILTER-FN
3354 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
3355 which will be REAL-BINDING.
3356 It should return a binding to use instead.
3357:keys DESCRIPTION
3358 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
3359 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
3360 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
3361:key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
3362 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
3363 keyboard binding.
3364:key-sequence nil
3365 This means that the command normally has no
3366 keyboard equivalent.
3367:help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
3368:button (TYPE . SELECTED)
3369 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
3370 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
3371 value says whether this button is currently selected.
3372
3373Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
3374Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
3375
3376(menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
3377
3378** New event types
3379
3380*** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
3381mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
3382corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
3383which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
3384
3385 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
3386
3387where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3388same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
3389indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
3390negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
3391the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
3392forward, away from the user.
3393
3394As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3395
3396*** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
3397files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
3398and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
3399filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
3400loaded into Emacs. The format is:
3401
3402 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
3403
3404where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3405same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
3406that were dragged and dropped.
3407
3408As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3409
3410** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
3411
3412*** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
3413any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
3414to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
3415
3416*** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
3417can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
3418that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
3419
3420*** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
3421in Emacs 19 and before.
3422
3423The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
3424The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
3425
3426*** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
3427buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
3428unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
3429representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
3430
3431This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
3432as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
3433viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
3434one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
3435will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
3436
3437This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
3438representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
3439(including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
3440consistent with the new representation.
3441
3442*** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
3443representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
3444about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
3445however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3446
3447The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
3448nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
3449using the table nonascii-translation-table.
3450
3451*** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
3452representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
3453representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3454
3455The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
3456loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
3457is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
3458
3459*** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3460which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
3461
3462*** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3463which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
3464
3465*** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
3466portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
3467so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
3468You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
3469
3470*** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
3471it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
3472
3473*** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
3474convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
3475buffer or string being searched.
3476
3477One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
3478[...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
3479searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
3480searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
3481obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
3482you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
3483expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
3484
3485*** Structure of coding system changed.
3486
3487All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
3488by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
3489which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
3490as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
3491vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
3492your own alias name of a coding system by the function
3493define-coding-system-alias.
3494
3495The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
3496the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
3497access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
3498pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
3499character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
3500safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
3501'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
3502`iso-8859-1'.
3503
3504Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
3505The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
3506coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
3507(coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
3508
3509Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
3510also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
3511are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
3512the other character sets and read it back correctly.
3513
3514*** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
3515proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
3516This function requires a user interaction.
3517
3518*** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
3519find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
3520select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
3521systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
3522a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
3523select-safe-coding-system.
3524
3525*** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
3526decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
3527last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
3528was done.
3529
3530*** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
3531used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
3532coding systems used by some specific language environment.
3533
3534*** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
3535return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
3536characters are found, they now return a list of single element
3537`undecided' or its subsidiaries.
3538
3539*** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
3540coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
3541coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
3542converted.
3543
3544*** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
3545coding system for communicating with other X clients.
3546
3547*** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
3548character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
3549character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
3550each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
3551either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
3552range of characters.
3553
3554*** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
3555Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
3556
3557*** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
3558in the current buffer at position POS.
3559
3560*** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
3561input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
3562function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
3563character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
3564event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
3565binding input-method-function to nil.
3566
3567The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
3568method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
3569input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
3570the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
3571not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
3572
3573The input method function is not called when reading the second and
3574subsequent events of a key sequence.
3575
3576*** You can customize any language environment by using
3577set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
3578
3579The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
3580customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
3581instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
3582environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
3583exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
3584\f
3585* Changes in Emacs 20.1
3586
3587** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
3588options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
3589at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
3590tree structure.
3591
3592M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
3593user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
3594
3595With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
3596session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
3597in your .emacs file.)
3598
3599** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
3600You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
3601
3602** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
3603This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
3604
3605** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
3606immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
3607kills the region.
3608
3609The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
3610delete the character before point, as usual.
3611
3612** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
3613on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
3614by setting search-highlight to nil.)
3615
3616** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
3617insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
3618the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
3619onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
3620history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
3621past.)
3622
3623** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
3624This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
3625in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
3626TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
3627makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
3628
3629As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
3630and is an alias for it.
3631
3632If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
3633use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
3634
3635** Scrolling changes
3636
3637*** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
3638position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
3639
3640In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
3641on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
3642where it started.
3643
3644*** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
3645move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
3646screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
3647does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
3648
3649*** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
3650top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
3651comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
3652recenters the window.
3653
3654** International character set support (MULE)
3655
3656Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
3657including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
3658Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
3659Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
3660features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
3661MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
3662
3663Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
3664coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
3665character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
3666variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
3667into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
3668
3669Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
3670generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
3671supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
3672language, to make it possible to type them.
3673
3674The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
3675character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
3676
3677The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
3678to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
3679
3680You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
3681
3682 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
3683
3684Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
3685characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
3686argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
3687already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
3688characters for their work until they want to change.
3689
3690*** Input methods
3691
3692An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
3693specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
3694has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
3695the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
3696support several input methods.
3697
3698The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
3699another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
3700work.
3701
3702A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
3703characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
3704composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
3705consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
3706sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
3707letter.
3708
3709The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
3710by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
3711First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
3712marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
3713mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
3714
3715None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
3716they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
3717phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
3718converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
3719
3720Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
3721word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
3722typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
3723the first guess is wrong.
3724
3725*** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
3726turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
3727
3728If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
3729byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
3730they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
3731the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
3732
3733However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
3734use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
3735includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
3736translate automatically to and from either one.
3737
3738*** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
3739
3740Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
3741file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
3742sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
3743what you want.
3744
3745If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
3746example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
3747system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
3748multibyte characters in that buffer.
3749
3750If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
3751character conversion as well.
3752
3753*** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
3754
3755A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
3756Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
3757requires using many fonts.
3758
3759Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
3760collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
3761
3762A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
3763the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
3764have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
3765you would use a font.
3766
3767If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
3768specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
3769display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
3770
3771The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
3772(that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
3773characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
3774or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
3775and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
3776
3777*** Defining fontsets.
3778
3779Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
3780chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
3781with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
3782
3783Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
3784of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
3785`fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
3786standard fontset are created automatically.
3787
3788If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
3789argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
3790FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
3791with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
3792name is `fontset-startup'.
3793
3794Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
3795The resource value should have this form:
3796 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
3797FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
3798 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
3799 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
3800 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
3801The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
3802of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
3803CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
3804FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
3805
3806Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
3807last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
3808You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
3809
3810For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
3811font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
3812following resource,
3813 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
3814the font for ASCII is generated as below:
3815 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
3816Here is the substitution rule:
3817 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
3818 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
3819 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
3820 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
3821 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
3822
3823The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
3824fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
3825that function explicitly to create a fontset.
3826
3827With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
3828like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
3829name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
3830fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
3831fontsets.
3832
3833*** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
3834defaults for a particular choice of language.
3835
3836Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
3837method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
3838visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
3839already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
3840language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
3841system for new files that you create.
3842
3843It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
3844set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
3845whole Emacs session.
3846
3847For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
3848chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
3849with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
3850
3851*** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
3852specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
3853specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
3854the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
3855coding systems that Emacs supports.
3856
3857*** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
3858lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
3859This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
3860After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
3861is used for *the immediately following command*.
3862
3863So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
3864write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
3865
3866If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
3867then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
3868
3869For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
3870visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
3871
3872*** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
3873construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
3874to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
3875specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
3876of the file.
3877
3878*** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
3879the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
3880code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
3881translated into that character code.
3882
3883This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
3884various countries to support the languages of those countries.
3885
3886By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
3887
3888*** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
3889the coding system for keyboard input.
3890
3891Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
3892with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
3893some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
3894
3895By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
3896
3897Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
3898input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
3899translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
3900to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
3901designed to work with terminals.
3902
3903*** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
3904specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
3905This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
3906has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
3907translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
3908in the corresponding buffer.
3909
3910By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
3911
3912*** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
3913to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
3914It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
3915
3916*** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
3917an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
3918command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
3919want to use.
3920
3921C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
3922method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
3923
3924*** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
3925layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
3926remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
3927which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
3928
3929*** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
3930the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
3931related information.
3932
3933*** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
3934HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
3935scripts.
3936
3937*** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
3938information about the support for a particular language.
3939You specify the language as an argument.
3940
3941*** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
3942the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
3943first dash.
3944
3945A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
3946(except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
3947whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
39481 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
3949
3950 A alternativnyj (Russian)
3951 B big5 (Chinese)
3952 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
3953 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
3954 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
3955 E euc-japan (Japanese)
3956 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
3957 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
3958 K euc-korea (Korean)
3959 R koi8 (Russian)
3960 Q tibetan
3961 S shift_jis (Japanese)
3962 T lao
3963 T tis620 (Thai)
3964 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
3965 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
3966 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
3967 v viqr (Vietnamese)
3968 z hz (Chinese)
3969
3970When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
3971two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
3972coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
3973keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
3974
3975*** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
3976conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
3977
3978When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
3979into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
3980rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
3981Rmail files themselves.
3982
3983*** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
3984conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
3985
3986Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
3987for sending mail:
3988
3989- If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
3990- Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
3991- Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
3992 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
3993- Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
3994
3995*** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
3996to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
3997Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
3998translations.
3999
4000** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4001of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4002insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4003without any conversion.
4004
4005** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4006You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4007RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4008any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4009
4010** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4011functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4012
4013Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4014Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4015
4016Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4017mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4018
4019** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4020complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4021in the buffer before point.
4022
4023With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4024symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4025you are using.
4026
4027With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4028just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4029
4030** File locking works with NFS now.
4031
4032The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4033in the same directory as FILENAME.
4034
4035This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4036works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4037can become a bottleneck.
4038
4039The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4040does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4041create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4042file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4043rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4044so useful that the change is worth while.
4045
4046When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4047are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4048collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4049tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4050
4051** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4052it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4053show-paren-mode.
4054
4055** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4056selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4057delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4058
4059** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4060within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4061complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4062
4063** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4064it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4065set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4066
4067** Changes in View mode.
4068
4069*** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4070Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4071
4072*** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4073view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4074
4075*** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4076previous state.
4077
4078*** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4079scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4080
4081*** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4082non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4083not just the selected window.
4084
4085*** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4086read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4087turns View mode on or off.
4088
4089*** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
4090how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
4091delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
4092
4093** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
4094now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
4095
4096** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
4097has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
4098presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
4099which version to compare with.
4100
4101** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
4102blocks if a match is inside the block.
4103
4104The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
4105is outside the block. By customizing the variable
4106isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
4107shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
4108
4109By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
4110of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
4111blocks, all of them or none.
4112
4113** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
4114current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
4115confirmation first.
4116
4117** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
4118now changes the major mode according to that file name.
4119However, the mode will not be changed if
4120(1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
4121(2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
4122 not suitable for ordinary files, or
4123(3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
4124
4125This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
4126
4127However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
4128these commands do not change the major mode.
4129
4130** M-x occur changes.
4131
4132*** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
4133it performs a case-sensitive search.
4134
4135*** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
4136if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
4137using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
4138
4139** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
4140in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
4141window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
4142that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
4143buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
4144
4145** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
4146after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
4147appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
4148come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
4149
4150** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4151selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
4152buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
4153
4154** Outline mode changes.
4155
4156*** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
4157
4158*** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
4159
4160** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
4161you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
4162Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
4163was already active.
4164
4165The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
4166unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
4167get confused by it.
4168
4169If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
4170set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
4171
4172** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
4173
4174*** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4175conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
4176character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
4177including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
4178
4179The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
4180mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
4181copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
4182
4183*** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
4184are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
4185values.
4186
4187`dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
4188case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
4189`dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
4190case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
4191
4192** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
4193certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
4194can be. The default value is 30.
4195
4196** Changes in Mail mode.
4197
4198*** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
4199Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
4200composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
4201`mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
4202`sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
4203behavior.
4204
4205C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
4206compose-mail-other-frame.
4207
4208*** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
4209the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
4210replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
4211buffer that shows the original message.
4212
4213*** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
4214with separator lines around the contents.
4215
4216*** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
4217in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
4218definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
4219need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
4220
4221*** New features in the mail-complete command.
4222
4223**** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
4224for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
4225controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
4226Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
4227
4228**** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
4229to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
4230/etc/passwd.
4231
4232**** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
4233to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
4234/etc/passwd.
4235
4236** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
4237special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
4238directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
4239reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
4240
4241Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
4242when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
4243be taken to be magic.
4244
4245** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
4246files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
4247available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
4248
4249M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
4250(-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
4251
4252** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
4253suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
4254
4255In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
4256
4257new key dired.el binding old key
4258------- ---------------- -------
4259 * c dired-change-marks c
4260 * m dired-mark m
4261 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
4262 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
4263 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
4264 * u dired-unmark u
4265 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
4266 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
4267 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
4268 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
4269 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
4270 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
4271
4272** Rmail changes.
4273
4274*** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
4275saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
4276chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
4277each time you run it.
4278
4279*** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
4280whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
4281
4282*** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
4283messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
4284means to move in the opposite direction.
4285
4286*** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
4287you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
4288
4289*** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
4290just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
4291It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
4292can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
4293for output.
4294
4295** Gnus changes.
4296
4297*** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
4298
4299*** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
4300Gnus.
4301
4302*** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
4303`and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
4304
4305*** Article washing status can be displayed in the
4306article mode line.
4307
4308*** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
4309
4310*** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
4311
4312(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
4313
4314*** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
4315are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
4316`gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
4317
4318*** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
4319
4320*** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
4321
4322*** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
4323See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
4324
4325*** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
4326Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
4327used to pick articles.
4328
4329*** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
4330another have been added.
4331
4332 `M-x gnus-change-server'
4333
4334*** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
4335generating lines in buffers.
4336
4337*** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
4338`M-C-_'.
4339
4340*** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
4341
4342*** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
4343
4344 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
4345
4346*** Scores can be decayed.
4347
4348 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
4349
4350*** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
4351Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
4352
4353*** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
4354the native server.
4355
4356 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
4357
4358*** A new command for reading collections of documents
4359(nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
4360
4361*** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
4362
4363*** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
4364even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
4365
4366*** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
4367(DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
4368
4369 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
4370 a group.
4371
4372*** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
4373sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
4374
4375 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
4376
4377*** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
4378
4379 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
4380
4381*** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
4382
4383 Use the `Y c' command.
4384
4385*** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
4386
4387*** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
4388
4389 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
4390
4391*** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
4392from incoming mail before saving the mail.
4393
4394 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
4395
4396*** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
4397
4398*** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
4399the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
4400
4401 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
4402
4403Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
4404and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
4405from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
4406hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
4407this issue.)
4408
4409Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
4410automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
4411particular news group. This can be done by:
4412
4413 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
4414
4415Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
4416of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
4417"XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
4418system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
4419for reading and posting).
4420
4421CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
4422 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
4423Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
4424newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
4425there.
4426
4427Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
4428default. Here are some of these default settings:
4429
4430 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
4431 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
4432 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
4433 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
4434 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
4435
4436When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
4437the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
4438
4439** CC mode changes.
4440
4441*** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
4442code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
4443values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
4444this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
4445Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
4446loaded.
4447
4448If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
4449Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
4450style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
4451share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
4452c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
4453must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
4454
4455*** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
4456of the current buffer.
4457
4458*** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
4459it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
4460of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
4461
4462*** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
4463style that the Python developers like.
4464
4465*** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
4466This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
4467just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
4468
4469** VC Changes [new]
4470
4471** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
4472name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
4473directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
4474
4475This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
4476master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
4477developers.
4478
4479You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
4480RET in a buffer visiting that file.
4481
4482*** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
4483other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
4484writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
4485calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
4486
4487*** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
4488version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
4489
4490** Calendar changes.
4491
4492A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
4493of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
4494for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
4495
4496** ps-print changes
4497
4498There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
4499
4500*** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
4501
4502The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
4503formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
4504`a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
4505`ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
4506It defaults to `letter'.
4507If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
4508
4509The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
4510of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
4511non-nil means "landscape" mode.
4512
4513The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
4514It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
4515It defaults to 1.
4516
4517*** Horizontal layout
4518
4519The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
4520`ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
4521All are measured in points.
4522
4523*** Vertical layout
4524
4525The vertical layout is determined by the variables
4526`ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
4527All are measured in points.
4528
4529*** Headers
4530
4531If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
4532`ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
4533margin above the text.
4534
4535If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
4536framing box is printed around the header.
4537
4538The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
4539`ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
4540
4541The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
4542`ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
4543`ps-header-font-size'.
4544
4545*** Font managing
4546
4547The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
4548used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
4549`ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
4550elements to this alist.
4551
4552The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
4553for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
4554
4555** hideshow changes.
4556
4557*** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
4558C++, ; for lisp).
4559
4560*** Support for java-mode added.
4561
4562*** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
4563in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
4564
4565*** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
4566the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
4567way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
4568
4569*** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
4570robust and a lot faster.
4571
4572*** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
4573
4574*** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
4575to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
4576documentation for more details.
4577
4578** Changes in Enriched mode.
4579
4580*** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
4581filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
4582of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
4583use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
4584the next time unless the fill-column is different.
4585
4586*** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
4587distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
4588as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
4589as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
4590
4591** Font Lock mode
4592
4593*** Custom support
4594
4595The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
4596font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
4597faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
4598group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
4599your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
4600consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
4601
4602You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
4603
4604*** Maximum decoration
4605
4606Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
4607default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
4608of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
4609supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
4610to get the old behavior.
4611
4612*** New support
4613
4614Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
4615
4616Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
4617support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
4618
4619*** Configurable support
4620
4621Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
4622additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
4623c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
4624java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
4625list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
4626of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
4627convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
4628
4629Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
4630way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
4631it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
4632
4633*** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
4634
4635You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
4636highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
4637for any mode.
4638
4639For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
4640
4641 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
4642
4643in your ~/.emacs.
4644
4645*** New faces
4646
4647Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
4648font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
4649distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
4650to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
4651
4652*** Changes to fast-lock support mode
4653
4654The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
4655cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
4656same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
4657
4658*** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
4659
4660The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
4661according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
4662the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
4663non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
4664refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
4665the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
4666Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
4667
4668This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
4669For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
4670this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
4671refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
4672containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
4673the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
4674
4675As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
4676
4677Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
4678Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
4679Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
4680new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
4681
4682If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
4683settings.
4684
4685** Ada mode changes.
4686
4687*** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
4688If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
4689procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
4690you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
4691stubs.
4692
4693*** There are two new commands:
4694 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
4695 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
4696
4697The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
4698`ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
4699`ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
4700
4701*** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
4702is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
4703Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
4704
4705*** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
4706formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
4707places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
4708space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
4709
4710** Scheme mode changes.
4711
4712*** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
4713mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
4714for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
4715with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
4716have any effect.
4717
4718If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
4719still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
4720scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
4721variables as buffer-local variables.
4722
4723*** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
4724Use M-x dsssl-mode.
4725
4726** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
4727it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
4728buffer in Emacs.
4729
4730** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
4731constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
4732(in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
4733
4734** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
4735which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
4736the current defun.
4737
4738** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
4739following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
4740
4741** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
4742and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
4743necessary).
4744
4745** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
4746if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
4747these register values no longer become completely useless.
4748If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
4749asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
4750it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
4751
4752** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
4753example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
4754be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
4755you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
4756
4757You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
4758variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
4759file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
4760revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
4761only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
4762
4763** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
4764since it applies only to the current frame.
4765
4766** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
4767file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
4768and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
4769
4770This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
4771multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
4772variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
4773tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
4774instead of just the file you are editing.
4775
4776** RefTeX mode
4777
4778RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
4779and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
4780different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
4781multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
4782turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
4783
4784C-c ( reftex-label
4785 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
4786 knows which kind of label is needed.
4787
4788C-c ) reftex-reference
4789 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
4790 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
4791
4792C-c [ reftex-citation
4793 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
4794 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
4795
4796C-c & reftex-view-crossref
4797 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
4798
4799C-c = reftex-toc
4800 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
4801 can quickly jump to every section.
4802
4803Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
4804commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
4805Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
4806reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
4807C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
4808
4809** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4810
4811*** Info documentation is now available.
4812
4813*** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
4814both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
4815
4816*** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
4817bibtex-user-optional-fields.
4818
4819*** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
4820(use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
4821
4822*** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
4823entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
4824appropriate functions.
4825
4826*** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
4827entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
4828
4829*** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
4830been cleaned.
4831
4832*** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
4833bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
4834
4835*** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
4836shall be delimited.
4837
4838*** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
4839bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
4840bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
4841
4842*** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
4843field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
4844prefixed with `ALT'.
4845
4846*** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
4847bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
4848formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
4849documentation).
4850
4851*** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
4852documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
4853for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
4854
4855*** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
4856comma should be inserted at end of last field.
4857
4858*** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
4859alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
4860signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
4861
4862*** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
4863
4864*** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
4865
4866*** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
4867from alien sources.
4868
4869*** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
4870to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
4871crossref entries.
4872
4873*** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
4874region.
4875
4876*** Added support for imenu.
4877
4878*** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
4879of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
4880`compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
4881`next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
4882
4883*** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
4884from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
4885
4886** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
4887
4888** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
4889functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
4890Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
4891as an argument.
4892
4893When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
4894and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
4895
4896** browse-url changes
4897
4898*** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
4899Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
4900(browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
4901non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
4902customization variables.
4903
4904*** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
4905
4906*** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
4907lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
4908(e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
4909
4910** Changes in Ediff
4911
4912*** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
4913pops up the Info file for this command.
4914
4915*** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
4916the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
4917merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
4918directories).
4919
4920*** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
4921and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
4922files in the same directory.
4923
4924*** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
4925The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
4926related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
4927
4928** Changes in Viper
4929
4930*** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
4931*** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
4932 instead of vip-.
4933*** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
4934*** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
4935Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
4936*** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
4937*** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
4938*** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
4939color when Viper is in insert state.
4940*** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
4941Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
4942viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
4943
4944** Etags changes.
4945
4946*** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
4947default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
4948Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
4949variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
4950not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
4951
4952*** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
4953
4954*** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
4955constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
4956
4957*** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
4958recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
4959In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
4960
4961*** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
4962C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
4963recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
4964methods and protocols.
4965
4966*** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
4967.cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
4968column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
4969paragraph name.
4970
4971*** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
4972an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
4973at least M times and as many as N times.
4974
4975** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
4976in files has changed slightly.
4977
4978With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
4979time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
4980This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
4981with old time-stamp-format values.
4982
4983In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
4984(`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
4985This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
4986reasons.
4987
4988In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
4989natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
4990fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
4991(`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
4992time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
4993specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
4994
4995Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
4996case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
4997truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
4998
4999The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5000being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5001future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5002recommended now will continue to work then.
5003
5004See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5005details.
5006
5007** There are some additional major modes:
5008
5009dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5010m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5011meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5012
5013** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5014copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5015into Emacs.
5016
5017** New Lisp packages include:
5018
5019*** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5020
5021*** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5022be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5023
5024*** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5025
5026*** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5027in shell buffers.
5028
5029*** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5030See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5031and `elint-defun'.
5032
5033*** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5034meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5035ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5036strings or comments.
5037
5038These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5039abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5040you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5041insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5042at these points.
5043
5044*** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5045can visit them by short forms of their names.
5046
5047*** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5048Emacs Lisp function at point.
5049
5050*** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5051
5052*** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5053switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5054
5055*** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5056
5057*** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5058
5059*** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5060
5061*** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5062from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5063
5064*** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5065You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5066inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5067original place after inserting the copy.
5068
5069*** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5070on the buffer.
5071
5072You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5073velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5074(with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5075
5076Enable mouse-drag with:
5077 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
5078-or-
5079 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
5080
5081*** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
5082mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
5083
5084*** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
5085It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
5086
5087*** ogonek
5088
5089The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
5090Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
5091platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
5092TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
5093ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
5094prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
5095instance) and vice versa.
5096
5097To use this package load it using
5098 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
5099Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
5100 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
5101 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
5102The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
5103ways of customization in `.emacs'.
5104
5105*** Interface to ph.
5106
5107Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
5108
5109The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
5110services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
5111these servers.
5112
5113*** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
5114
5115*** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
5116You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
5117while the real cursor does not move.
5118
5119*** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
5120for visiting your favorite web sites.
5121
5122*** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
5123so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
5124
5125** movemail change
5126
5127Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
5128mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
5129supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
5130user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
5131
5132This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
5133\f
5134* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
5135
5136** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
5137
5138Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
5139end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
5140Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
5141file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
5142file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
5143
5144To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
5145C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
5146coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
5147specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
5148LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
5149save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
5150\f
5151* Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
5152
5153** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
5154Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
5155vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
5156Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
5157
5158** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
5159to start with w32- instead of win32-.
5160
5161In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
5162don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
5163"win".
5164
5165** Basic Lisp changes
5166
5167*** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
5168evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
5169
5170*** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
5171be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
5172or by the user.
5173
5174The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
5175
5176*** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
5177
5178(when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
5179(unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
5180
5181*** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
5182usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
5183its argument.
5184
5185*** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
5186
5187*** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
5188
5189*** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
5190
5191*** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
5192error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
5193include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
5194`format' function.
5195
5196*** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
5197or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
5198whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
5199
5200*** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
5201either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
5202adding one of these suffixes.
5203
5204*** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
5205which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
5206If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
5207
5208We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
5209because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
5210
5211*** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
5212
5213*** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
5214You must load the `cl' library to define it.
5215
5216*** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
5217conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
5218
5219 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
5220
5221BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
5222BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
5223
5224*** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
5225choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
5226restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
5227works using `save-current-buffer'.
5228
5229*** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
5230write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
5231of the last form.
5232
5233*** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
5234which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
5235last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
5236as the last form.
5237
5238*** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
5239characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
5240matches.
5241
5242For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
5243
5244*** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
5245with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
5246Then it returns that string.
5247
5248For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
5249
5250(with-output-to-string
5251 (princ "The buffer is ")
5252 (princ (buffer-name)))
5253
5254returns "The buffer is foo".
5255
5256** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
5257is non-nil.
5258
5259These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
5260buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
5261characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
5262
5263*** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
5264a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
5265
5266Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
5267character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
5268Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
5269position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
5270characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
5271 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
5272
5273ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
5274Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
5275non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
5276characters".
5277
5278The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
5279through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
5280"leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
5281range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
5282leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
5283
5284*** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
5285(forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
5286multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
5287character, which may be more than one buffer position.
5288
5289This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
5290always one buffer position, need to be changed.
5291
5292However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
5293
5294*** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
5295because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
5296have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
5297the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
5298guaranteed.
5299
5300*** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
5301between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
5302character).
5303
5304When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
5305
5306 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
5307 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
5308 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
5309 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
5310 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
5311
5312*** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
5313
5314*** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
5315`length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
5316more than the number of characters.
5317
5318You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
5319it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
5320\xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
5321is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
5322follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
5323newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
5324
5325*** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
5326and returns a string containing those characters.
5327
5328*** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
5329(sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
5330counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
5331character, sref signals an error.
5332
5333*** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
5334in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
5335string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5336
5337*** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
5338in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
5339region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5340
5341*** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
5342the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
5343to a vector of the characters in it.
5344
5345*** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
5346of a string. You call it as follows:
5347
5348 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
5349
5350This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
5351STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
5352This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
5353Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
5354it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
5355
5356*** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
5357if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5358
5359*** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
5360if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5361
5362*** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
5363to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
5364not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
5365which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
5366
5367(truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
5368
5369This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
5370
5371The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
5372If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
5373are not included in the resulting value.
5374
5375The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
5376at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
5377WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
5378is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
5379
5380If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
5381place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
5382character extends across that column), then the padding character
5383PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
5384string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
5385column START-COLUMN.
5386
5387*** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
5388the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
5389necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
5390difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
5391changed text, before the change.
5392
5393*** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
5394sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
5395one character set for each script, not for each language.
5396
5397**** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
5398
5399**** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
5400
5401**** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
5402set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
5403
5404**** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
5405name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
5406which identify the character within that character set.
5407
5408**** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
5409byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
5410opposite of split-char.
5411
5412**** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
5413of all the characters between BEG and END.
5414
5415**** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
5416of all the characters in a string.
5417
5418*** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
5419and specifying coding systems.
5420
5421**** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
5422system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
5423of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
5424(Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
5425and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
5426as what to do about code conversion.)
5427
5428**** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
5429name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
5430
5431**** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5432for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5433except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
5434
5435Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5436which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
5437to match against a file name.
5438
5439VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5440a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5441decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5442to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5443systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5444specifies the coding system for encoding.
5445
5446If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5447or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5448
5449**** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
5450the coding system to use for network sockets.
5451
5452Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5453which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
5454either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
5455service names.
5456
5457VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5458a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5459decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5460to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5461systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5462specifies the coding system for encoding.
5463
5464If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5465or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5466
5467**** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5468for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5469except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
5470start the subprocess.
5471
5472**** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
5473systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
5474when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
5475(OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
5476to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
5477
5478**** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
5479coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
5480subprocess.
5481
5482It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
5483but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
5484start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
5485connection permanently or until overridden.
5486
5487The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
5488file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
5489network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
5490coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
5491It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
5492system for one operation at a time.
5493
5494**** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
5495files, subprocesses or network connections.
5496
5497**** The function process-coding-system tells you what
5498coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
5499The value is a cons cell,
5500 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
5501where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
5502the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
5503input to the subprocess.
5504
5505**** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
5506change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
5507
5508** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
5509customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
5510you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
5511
5512You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
5513variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
5514information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
5515legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
5516customization.
5517
5518Thus, instead of writing
5519
5520 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
5521 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
5522
5523you would now write this:
5524
5525 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
5526 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
5527 :type 'boolean
5528 :group foo)
5529
5530The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
5531two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
5532describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
5533for a description of them.
5534
5535The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
5536should belong to. You define a new group like this:
5537
5538 (defgroup ispell nil
5539 "Spell checking using Ispell."
5540 :group 'processes)
5541
5542The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
5543group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
5544but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
5545to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
5546second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
5547
5548Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
5549package should have just one group; a more complex package should
5550have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
5551package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
5552first-level subgroups.
5553
5554** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
5555
5556This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
5557separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
5558
5559** easy-mmode
5560
5561The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
5562developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
5563only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
5564predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
5565`easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
5566`easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
5567
5568** Text property changes
5569
5570*** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
5571text property.
5572
5573*** The new functions next-char-property-change and
5574previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
5575place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
5576functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
5577starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
5578
5579If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
5580LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
5581of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
5582position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
5583
5584*** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
5585value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
5586is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
5587
5588** Changes in invisibility features
5589
5590*** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
5591hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
5592is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
5593should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
5594would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
5595make the overlay visible.
5596
5597During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
5598invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
5599needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
5600which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
5601the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
5602t when it should hide it.
5603
5604*** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
5605
5606Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
5607invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
5608and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
5609Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
5610manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
5611Here is an example of how to do this:
5612
5613 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
5614 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5615 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
5616 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5617
5618 ...
5619 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
5620
5621 ...
5622 ;; When done with the overlays:
5623 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5624 ;; Or respectively:
5625 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5626
5627** Changes in syntax parsing.
5628
5629*** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
5630`parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
5631obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
5632`parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
5633
5634If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
5635is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
5636used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
5637
5638When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
5639character in the buffer is calculated thus:
5640
5641 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
5642 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
5643
5644 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
5645 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
5646 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
5647
5648 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
5649 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
5650 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
5651 determine the syntax type of the character.
5652
5653 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
5654 of the current buffer.
5655
5656*** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
5657value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
5658for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
5659
5660*** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
5661and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
5662only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
5663character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
5664another character with the same code (unless quoted).
5665
5666These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
5667text property.
5668
5669*** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
5670arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
5671of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
5672
5673*** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
5674(and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
5675element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
5676nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
5677string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
5678
5679*** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
5680syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
5681`font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
5682
5683** Changes in face features
5684
5685*** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
5686if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
5687
5688*** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
5689of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
5690
5691*** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
5692set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
5693
5694*** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
5695set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
5696
5697*** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
5698by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
5699and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
5700the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
5701overlay property).
5702
5703This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
5704arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
5705
5706** Changes in file-handling functions
5707
5708*** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
5709directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
5710they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
5711is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
5712
5713This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
5714begins with ~.
5715
5716*** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
5717it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
5718
5719*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
5720the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
5721
5722*** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
5723as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
5724
5725*** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
5726character code conversion as well as other things.
5727
5728Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
5729(formerly it did not).
5730
5731*** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
5732environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
5733
5734*** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
5735instead of constant strings.
5736
5737*** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
5738to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
5739any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
5740
5741substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
5742in the same way as before.
5743
5744*** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
5745The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
5746which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
5747
5748*** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
5749error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
5750else, and returns nil.
5751
5752*** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
5753directory cannot be listed.
5754
5755** Changes in minibuffer input
5756
5757*** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
5758read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
5759additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
5760argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
5761ways:
5762
5763 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
5764 It is available through the history command M-n.
5765
5766*** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
5767read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
5768argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
5769minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
5770enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
5771
5772In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
5773argument in this way.
5774
5775*** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
5776from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
5777minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
5778
5779** Echo area features
5780
5781*** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
5782echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
5783minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
5784after the echo area is cleared.
5785
5786*** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
5787in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
5788
5789** Keyboard input features
5790
5791*** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
5792set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
5793
5794*** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
5795received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
5796by keyboard macros.
5797
5798** Frame-related changes
5799
5800*** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
5801creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
5802hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
5803
5804*** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
5805the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
5806has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
5807
5808*** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5809selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
5810value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
5811in the selected frame.
5812
5813*** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
5814is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
5815which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
5816
5817** X Windows features
5818
5819*** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
5820x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
5821x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
5822
5823*** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
5824The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
5825
5826*** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
5827MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
5828A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
5829
5830If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
5831it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
5832
5833** Subprocess features
5834
5835*** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
5836functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
5837automatically.
5838
5839*** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
5840and returns the output from the command as a string.
5841
5842*** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
5843and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
5844
5845** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
5846does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
5847
5848** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
5849at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
5850goes after the other menu items.
5851
5852** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
5853of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
5854around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
5855are in use.
5856
5857The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
5858series of several changes--if that seems safe.
5859
5860Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
5861after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
5862form.
5863
5864** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
5865is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
5866but its hook is still run.
5867
5868** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
5869for errors that are handled by condition-case.
5870
5871If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
5872regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
5873useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
5874
5875This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
5876are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
5877filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
5878warned.
5879
5880** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
5881way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
5882
5883** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
5884integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
5885functions like display-time.
5886
5887** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
5888name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
5889
5890** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
5891can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
5892is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
5893
5894** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
5895if there is an error in compilation.
5896
5897** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
5898switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
5899argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
5900they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
5901
5902** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
5903Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
5904the *scratch* buffer.
5905
5906** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
5907The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
5908where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
5909e.g., in Font Lock mode.
5910
5911** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
5912and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
5913It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
5914
5915** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
5916using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
5917variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
5918and compose-mail-other-frame.
5919
5920** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
5921can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
5922full name of the specified user will be returned.
5923
5924** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
5925of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
5926where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
5927in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
5928option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
5929files at all.
5930
5931** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
5932and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
5933width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
5934the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
5935
5936For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
5937minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
5938with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
5939is how %S normally pads to two positions.
5940
5941** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
5942
5943** imenu.el changes.
5944
5945You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
5946item from menu created by imenu.
5947
5948An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
5949#include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
5950select one of those items.
5951\f
5952* Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
5953\f
5954* Changes in Emacs 19.33.
5955
5956** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
5957mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
5958
5959** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
5960use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
5961Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
5962\f
5963* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
5964
5965** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
5966To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
5967
5968** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5969conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
5970matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
5971expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
5972word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
5973all caps.
5974
5975** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
5976at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
5977
5978When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
5979does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
5980as in previous Emacs versions.
5981
5982** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
5983non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
5984time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
5985frames.
5986
5987** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
5988if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
5989This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
5990Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
5991accident.
5992
5993** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
5994keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
5995It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
5996line and then executing the macro.
5997
5998This command is not new, but was never documented before.
5999
6000** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6001(something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6002characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6003characters.
6004
6005** Font Lock mode
6006
6007*** Font Lock support modes
6008
6009Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6010below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6011hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6012to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6013Font Lock mode is enabled.
6014
6015For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6016
6017 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6018
6019in your ~/.emacs.
6020
6021*** lazy-lock
6022
6023The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6024only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6025becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6026Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6027occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6028buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6029Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6030
6031To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6032
6033 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6034
6035To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6036
6037** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6038
6039*** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6040paren and key.
6041
6042*** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6043supported.
6044
6045** Gnus changes.
6046
6047Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6048commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6049significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6050previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6051
6052Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6053between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6054
6055*** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
6056variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6057obsolete.
6058
6059*** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6060missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6061
6062 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6063
6064*** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6065
6066 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6067
6068*** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
6069referred.
6070
6071*** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6072
6073 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6074
6075*** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
6076
6077 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
6078
6079*** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
6080buffers.
6081
6082 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
6083
6084*** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
6085
6086 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
6087
6088*** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
6089
6090 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
6091
6092*** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
6093
6094 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
6095
6096*** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
6097is possible.
6098
6099 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
6100
6101*** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
6102groups of groups.
6103
6104*** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
6105
6106*** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
6107batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
6108
6109*** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
6110
6111*** The Gnus cache is much faster.
6112
6113*** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
6114
6115 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
6116
6117*** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
6118expiration times.
6119
6120*** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
6121
6122*** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
6123process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
6124
6125*** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
6126articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
6127bound to keys on the `/' submap.
6128
6129*** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
6130articles with the `*' command.
6131
6132*** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
6133
6134*** Article headers can be buttonized.
6135
6136 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
6137
6138*** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
6139
6140*** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
6141`nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
6142
6143*** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
6144buffer.
6145
6146*** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
6147
6148*** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
6149
6150*** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
6151
6152 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
6153
6154*** Groups can be made permanently visible.
6155
6156 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
6157
6158*** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
6159
6160*** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
6161
6162*** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
6163
6164 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
6165 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
6166
6167*** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
6168refetching.
6169
6170 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
6171
6172*** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
6173buffer to allow easier treatment.
6174
6175*** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
6176
6177*** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
6178
6179 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
6180
6181*** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
6182articles.
6183
6184 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
6185
6186*** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
6187
6188*** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
6189cited text to hide is now customizable.
6190
6191 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
6192
6193*** Boring headers can be hidden.
6194
6195 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
6196
6197*** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
6198
6199*** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
6200
6201The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
6202in greater detail.
6203\f
6204* Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
6205
6206** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
6207second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
6208asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
6209exists.
6210
6211** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
6212as well as lists.
6213
6214** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
6215of a given keymap.
6216
6217** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
6218given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
6219keymap or nil.
6220
6221** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
6222an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
6223name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
6224menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
6225equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
6226alias.
6227\f
6228* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
6229
6230** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
6231
6232Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
6233This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
6234was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
6235far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
6236pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
6237
6238For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
6239you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
6240`http://www.vtw.org/'.
6241
6242** A note about C mode indentation customization.
6243
6244The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
6245do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
6246It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
6247much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
6248chapter of the manual for details.
6249
6250However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
6251customization variables take effect.
6252
6253** Marking with the mouse.
6254
6255When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
6256highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
6257using M-x transient-mark-mode.
6258
6259** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
6260
6261*** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
6262
6263*** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
6264to work on NT only and not on 95.)
6265
6266*** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
6267in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
6268you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
6269application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
6270applications, these problems are significant.
6271
6272If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
6273likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
6274However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
6275will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
6276other DOS application as a subprocess.
6277
6278Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
6279You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
6280
6281If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
6282subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
6283have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
6284Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
6285separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
6286Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
6287
6288** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
6289
6290This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
6291which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
6292minibuffer contains.
6293
6294** `title' frame parameter and resource.
6295
6296The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
6297It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
6298It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
6299affects just the displayed title of the frame.
6300
6301The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
6302it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
6303and also serves as the default for the displayed title
6304when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
6305
6306** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
6307enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
6308
6309** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
6310F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
6311Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
6312
6313If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
6314menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
6315something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
6316the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
6317
6318 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
6319
6320** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
6321to replace the characters it "deletes".
6322
6323** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
6324
6325** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
6326a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
6327select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
6328It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
6329immediately after the selected one.
6330
6331This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
6332made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
6333
6334** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
6335
6336Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
6337directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
6338If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
6339Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
6340recover-session.
6341
6342You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
6343auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
6344will not work.
6345
6346Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
6347normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
6348this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
6349bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
6350now that the bug is fixed.
6351
6352** Changes to Version Control (VC)
6353
6354There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
6355when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
6356Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
6357which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
6358
6359If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
6360telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
6361VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
6362the link is visited and a warning displayed.
6363
6364** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
6365Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
6366is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
6367
6368There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
6369Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
6370enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
6371The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
6372remain normal.
6373
6374** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
6375header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
6376
6377Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
6378known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
6379offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
6380Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
6381
6382Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
6383of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
6384a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
6385name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
6386documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
6387`mail-directory-stream'.)
6388
6389** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
6390skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
6391characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
6392with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
6393
6394Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
6395- to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
6396wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
6397
6398The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
6399less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
6400headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
6401Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
6402Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
6403fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
6404to a limitation in font-lock).
6405
6406External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
6407
6408** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
6409buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
6410buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
6411this example:
6412
6413 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
6414 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
6415
6416** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6417
6418*** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
6419
6420*** Font Lock mode is now supported.
6421
6422*** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
6423
6424*** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
6425entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
6426will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
6427isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
6428(bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
6429The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
6430
6431*** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
6432does the same job.
6433
6434*** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
6435"Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
6436
6437*** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
6438text.
6439
6440** Font Lock mode
6441
6442*** Global Font Lock mode
6443
6444Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
6445new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
6446font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
6447turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
6448on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
6449
6450For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
6451
6452 (global-font-lock-mode t)
6453
6454in your ~/.emacs.
6455
6456*** Local Refontification
6457
6458In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
6459However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
6460those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
6461command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
6462
6463In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
6464(The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
6465current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
6466above and below point.
6467
6468With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
6469
6470** Follow mode
6471
6472Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
6473buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
6474side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
6475they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
6476split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
6477follow-mode.
6478
6479M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
6480
6481To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
6482command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
6483
6484** hide-show changes.
6485
6486The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
6487to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
6488normal hooks.
6489
6490** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
6491The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
6492
6493** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
6494recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
6495those that begin a function, record, or macro.
6496
6497** MSDOS Changes
6498
6499*** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
6500Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
6501
6502*** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
6503and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
6504
6505*** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
6506
6507*** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
6508pressing both mouse buttons.
6509
6510*** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
6511restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
6512are:
6513
6514**** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
6515now works.
6516
6517**** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
6518
6519**** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
6520implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
6521
6522**** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
6523
6524**** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
6525
6526**** `M-x recover-session' works.
6527
6528**** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
6529
6530**** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
6531\f
6532* Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
6533
6534** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
6535tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
6536remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
6537this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
6538behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
6539
6540** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
6541
6542The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
6543not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
6544need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
6545be different.
6546
6547It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
6548than `system-type'.
6549
6550See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
6551
6552** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
6553now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
6554
6555** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
6556that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
6557
6558** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
6559no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
6560reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
6561
6562The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
6563to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
6564like this:
6565
6566 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6567
6568SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
6569It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
6570becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
6571
6572REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
6573seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
6574means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
6575
6576*** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
6577up if too much time passes.
6578
6579 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
6580
6581This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
6582If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
6583of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
6584form in BODY.
6585
6586*** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
6587a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
6588call looks like this:
6589
6590 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6591
6592SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
6593runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
6594timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
6595ARGS.
6596
6597Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
6598command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
6599command.
6600
6601REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
6602time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
6603does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
6604each time Emacs becomes idle.
6605
6606If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
6607idle for SECS seconds.
6608
6609*** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
6610all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
6611programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
6612instead.
6613
6614*** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
6615there is no answer within a certain time.
6616
6617 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
6618
6619asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
6620within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
6621Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
6622
6623** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
6624arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
6625meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
6626arguments in between are ignored.
6627
6628This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
6629the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
6630
6631** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
6632/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
6633/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
6634site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
6635version.
6636
6637It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
6638version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
6639for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
6640has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
6641and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
6642problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
6643
6644** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
6645.abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
6646systems with limited file name syntax.
6647
6648Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
6649convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
6650for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
6651completions.el:
6652
6653(defvar save-completions-file-name
6654 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
6655 "*The filename to save completions to.")
6656
6657This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
6658depends on the operating system, because the definition of
6659convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
6660Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
6661MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
6662
6663** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
6664rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
6665minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
6666
6667** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
6668marker from its buffer position.
6669
6670** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
6671Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
6672The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
6673
6674** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
6675that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
6676condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
6677of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
6678matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
6679regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
6680
6681This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
6682errors that happen often during editing.
6683
6684** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
6685into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
6686puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
6687
6688** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
6689now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
6690
6691** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
6692a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
6693name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
6694to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
6695and not get-buffer-window.
6696
6697** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
6698calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
6699being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
6700
6701If you use this feature, you should set the variable
6702buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
6703property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
6704non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
6705are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
6706property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
6707over and over for the same text.
6708
6709** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
6710
6711*** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
6712in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
6713
6714;; @(#) HEADER: text
6715;; $HEADER: text $
6716
6717in addition to the normal
6718
6719;; HEADER: text
6720
6721*** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
6722checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
6723lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
6724\f
6725* For older news, see the file ONEWS.
6726
6727----------------------------------------------------------------------
6728Copyright information:
6729
6730Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6731
6732 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
6733 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
6734 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
6735 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
6736
6737 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
6738 of this document, or of portions of it,
6739 under the above conditions, provided also that they
6740 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
6741\f
6742Local variables:
6743mode: outline
6744paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
6745end: