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1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999
2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3See the end for copying conditions.
4
5Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8\f
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9* Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
13\f
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14* Changes in Emacs 21.1
15
16** Faces and frame parameters.
17
18There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
19Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
20`scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
21`scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
22sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
23for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
24parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
25
26Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
27`default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
79214ddf 28`foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
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29`default' face and vice versa.
30
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31** New face `menu'.
32
33The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
34Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
35attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
36
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37** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
38
39The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
40colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
41correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
42the screen gamma of a frame's display.
43
44PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
45in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
46color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
47
48The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
49`ScreenGamma'.
50
51** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
52
53The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
54Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
55oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
56of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
57the text.
58
59** Emacs has a new face implementation.
60
61The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
62font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
63height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
64These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
65specify a font.
66
67Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
68These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
69under Lisp changes, below.
70
71** New default font is Courier 12pt.
72
73** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
74its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
75it is hollow.
76
77** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
78truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
79foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
80customizing face `fringe'.
81
82** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
83can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
84
85** LessTif support.
86
87Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
88need a version 0.88.1 or later.
89
90** Toolkit scroll bars.
91
92Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
93LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
94configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
95bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
96bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
97Emacs.
98
99When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
100Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
101Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
102Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
103define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
104`s/freebsd.h' as an example.
105
106Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
107a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
108directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
109different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
110system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
111add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
112
113The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
114`float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
115This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
116image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
117Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
118
119** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
120
121When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
122widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
123Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
124
125** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
126
127When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
128whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
129defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
130highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
131displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
132whitespace.
133
134** Busy-cursor.
135
136Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
137display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
138
139** Blinking cursor
140
141M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
142terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
143and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
144the group `cursor'.
145
146** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
147
148This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
149generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
150See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
151details.
152
153Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
154have to do anything to activate it.
155
156** Tabs and variable-width text.
157
158Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
159defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
160independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
161Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
162
163** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
164
165*** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
166
167 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
168
169The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
170one.
171
172*** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
173Motif.
174
175** Hscrolling in C code.
176
177Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
178
179** Tool bar support.
180
181Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
182how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
183
184** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
185
186Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
187mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
188line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
189about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
190in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
191
192Currently, the following actions have been defined:
193
194- Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
195buffers.
196
197- Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
198M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
199
200- Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
201
202- Mouse-1 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
203toggles the read-only status.
204
205- Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
206
207** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
208
209When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
210from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialogs' is
211non-nil.
212
213** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
214
215Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
216Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
217the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
218italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
219Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
220attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
221
222** Sound support
223
224Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
225(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
226Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
227(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
228to enable sound support.
229
230** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
231the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
232forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
233value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
234users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
235even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
236
237The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
238
239** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
240
241As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
242drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
243`x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
244
245** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
246bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
247
248This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
249`indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
250variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
251
252** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
253
254When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
255value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
256number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
257fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
258
259When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
260value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
261number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
262fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
263
264** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
265notably at the end of lines.
266
267All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
268spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
269
270** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
271query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
272after each match to get the replacement text.
273
274** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
275
276If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
277longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
278on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
279by setting the following variable:
280
281- User option: max-mini-window-height
282
283Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
284fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
285specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
286
287Default is 0.25.
288
289** Changes to RefTeX mode
290
291*** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
292 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
293 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
294 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
295 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
296 can be edited from that buffer.
297
298*** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
299 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
300 `A' to use all marked entries).
301
302*** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
303 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
304
305*** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
306 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
307 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
308 been cited.
309
310** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
311has the following new features:
312
313*** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
314may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
315to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
316time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
317
318*** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
319feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
320file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
321compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
322pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
323defaults to 1.
324
325** Tooltips.
326
327Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
328mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
329can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
330
331Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
332variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
333the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
334tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
335
336** Customize changes
337
338*** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
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339`State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
340cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
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341
342*** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
343Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
344default).
345
346** New features in evaluation commands
347
348The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
349modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
350print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
351customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
352eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
353
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354** Dired changes
355
356*** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
357command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
358is, delete only empty directories.
359
360*** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
361command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
362copy directories recursively.
363
364** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
365use the -f option when sending mail.
366
367** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
368selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
369
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370** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
371names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
372sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
373
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374** Shell script mode changes.
375
376Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
377derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
378sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
379
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380** Etags changes.
381
382*** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
383
384*** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
385declarations when given the --declarations option.
386
387*** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
388"operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
389
390*** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
391types.
392
393*** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
394
395*** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
396
397*** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
398are now tagged.
399
400*** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
401variables are tagged.
402
403*** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
404
405*** .ss files are Scheme files.
406
407*** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex.
408
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409** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
410and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
411LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
412
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413** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
414These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
415(Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
416currently no specific input method support for them.
417
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418** New modes and packages
419
420*** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
421
422*** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
423
424*** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
425
426*** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
427Pascal) language.
428
429*** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
430the text at point.
431
432*** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
433
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434*** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
435
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436*** whitespace.el ???
437
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438*** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
439files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
440(very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
441interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
442often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
443uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
444codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
445
446*** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
447
448Here is an example of columns:
449
450horse apple bus
451dog pineapple car EXTRA
452porcupine strawberry airplane
453
454Doing the following settings:
455
456 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
457 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
458 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
459 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
460
461
462Selecting the lines above and typing:
463
464 M-x delimit-columns-region
465
466It results:
467
468[ horse , apple , bus , ]
469[ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
470[ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
471
472delim-col has the following options:
473
474 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
475 before all columns.
476
477 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
478 between each column.
479
480 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
481 after all columns.
482
483 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
484 each column.
485
486delim-col has the following commands:
487
488 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
489 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
490
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491*** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
492were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
493is displayed in the "Files" menu.
494
495The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
496
497To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
498
499To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
500M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
501
502To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
503M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
504
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505*** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
506text.
507
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508** Withdrawn packages
509
510*** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
511functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
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512
513*** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el.
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514
515** Not new, but not mentioned before:
516M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
517
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518\f
519* Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
520
521Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
522--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
523When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
524so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
525
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526** New functions and variables for locales.
527
528The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
529decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
530time functions like strftime. The new variables `messages-locale' and
531`time-locale' give the system locales to be used during the next
532invocations of these two types of functions; the new variables
533`previous-messages-locale' and `previous-time-locale' give the locales
534most recently used.
535
536The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
537environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
538the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
539environment variables. It is normally invoked during startup. It
540uses the new variables `locale-language-names',
541`locale-charset-language-names', and `locale-preferred-coding-systems'
542to make its decisions.
543
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544** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
545To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
546modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
547start sequences.
548
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549** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
550because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
551
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552** New function `propertize'
553
554The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
555strings with text properties.
556
557- Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
558
559Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
560by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
561PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
562specified value of that property. Example:
563
564 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
565
566+++
567** push and pop macros.
568
569A simple version of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
570is now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
571as the place that holds the list to be changed.
572
573(push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
574(pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
575 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
576
577+++
578** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
579as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
580
581[:digit:] matches 0 through 9
582[:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
583[:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
584[:blank:] matches space and tab only
585[:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
586 space, and DEL.
587[:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
588 and DEL.
589[:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
590 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
591 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
592[:alpha:] matches letters.
593 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
594 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
595[:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
596[:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
597[:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
598[:punct:] matches punctuation.
599 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
600 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
601[:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
602[:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
603[:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
604
605+++
606** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
607
608The following functions are defined for hash tables:
609
610- Function: make-hash-table ARGS
611
612The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
613are optional. The following arguments are defined:
614
615:test TEST
616
617TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
618Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
619it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
620
621:size SIZE
622
623SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
624many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
625
626:rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
627
628REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
629full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
630size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
6311.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
632old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
633
634:rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
635
636THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
637hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
638(size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
639
640:weakness WEAK
641
642WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
643Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
644their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
645hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
646
647- Function: makehash &optional TEST
648
649Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
650
651- Function: hash-table-p TABLE
652
653Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
654
655- Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
656
657Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
658values are shared.
659
660- Function: hash-table-count TABLE
661
662Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
663
664- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
665
666Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
667
668- Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
669
670Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
671
672- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
673
674Returns the size of TABLE.
675
676- Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
677
678Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
679
680- Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
681
682Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
683
684- Function: clrhash TABLE
685
686Clear TABLE.
687
688- Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
689
690Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
691not found.
692
79214ddf 693- Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
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694
695Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
696another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
697
698- Function: remhash KEY TABLE
699
700Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
701
702- Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
703
704Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
705arguments KEY and VALUE.
706
707- Function: sxhash OBJ
708
709Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
710
711- Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
712
713Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
714a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
79214ddf 715comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
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716and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
717of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
718
719TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
720
721HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
722code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
723integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
724
725Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
726be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
727
728 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
729 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
730
731 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
732 (sxhash (upcase a)))
733
79214ddf 734 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
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735 'case-fold-string-hash))
736
737 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
738
739+++
740** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
741
742It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
743circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
744a cons cell which is its own cdr.
745
746+++
747** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
748
749If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
750#N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
751
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752+++
753** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
754t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
755specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
756is too short to reach that column.
757
758+++
759** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
760now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
761after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
762two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
763
764If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
765perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
766and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
767
768+++
769** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
770to specify which buffer to return the size of.
771
772+++
773** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
774calendar-move-hook after moving point.
775
776+++
777** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
778directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
779small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
780small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
781temporary-file-directory instead.
782
783+++
784** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
785the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
786`before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
787hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
788
789+++
790** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
791elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
792
793+++
794** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
795
796make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
797creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
798ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
799
800+++
801** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
802
803The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
804on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
805is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
806never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
807ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
808overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
809
810If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
811that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
812to get an error if the file exists at that time.
813The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
814
815+++
816** Function `format' now handles text properties.
817
818Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
819If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
820ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
821result string.
822
823Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
824string where arguments appear in the result string.
825
826Example:
827
828 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
829 (s2 "world"))
830 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
831 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
b246b1f6 832 (format s1 s2))
a933dad1
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833
834results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
835
836+++
837** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
838
839Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
840The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
841argument in it.
842
843 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
844 (arg "world"))
845 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
846 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
847 (message msg arg))
848
849+++
850** Sound support
851
852Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
853(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
854
855Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
856(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
857to enable sound support.
858
859Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
860list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
861when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
862functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
863sound to play, before playing the sound.
864
865The following sound properties are supported:
866
867- `:file FILE'
868
869FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
870searched relative to `data-directory'.
871
872- `:volume VOLUME'
873
874VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
8750..1. This property is optional.
876
877Other properties are ignored.
878
879** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
880\f
881* New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
882
883Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
884--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
885When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
886so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
887
888** New face implementation.
889
890Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
891font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
892
893+++
894*** New faces.
895
896Each face can specify the following display attributes:
897
898 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
79214ddf 899
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900 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
901 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
79214ddf 902
a933dad1 903 3. Font height in 1/10pt
79214ddf 904
a933dad1 905 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
79214ddf 906
a933dad1 907 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
79214ddf 908
a933dad1 909 6. Foreground color.
79214ddf 910
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911 7. Background color.
912
913 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
914
915 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
916
917 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
918
919 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
920
921 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
922 color.
923
924 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
925 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
926
927Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
928same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
929frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
930faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
931with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
932attributes mentioned above.
933
934There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
935definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
936created frames.
79214ddf 937
a933dad1
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938A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
939have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
940`fully-specified'.
941
942+++
943*** Face merging.
944
945The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
946combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
947aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
948properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
949that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
950results in a fully-specified face.
951
952+++
953*** Face realization.
954
955After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
956merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
957realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
958available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
959face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
960cache of the frame on which it was realized.
961
962Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
963character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
964for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
965charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
966
967Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
968specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
969being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
970the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
971statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
972
973In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
974`char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
9750x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
976the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
977initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
978Emacs.
979
980Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
981`enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
982registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
983with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
984
985++++
986**** Clearing face caches.
987
988The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
989on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
990unused fonts.
991
992+++
993*** Font selection.
79214ddf 994
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995Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
996given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
997for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
998
999If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1000pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1001family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1002property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1003an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1004
1005Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1006against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1007match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1008
1009Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1010
1011The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1012attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1013face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1014names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1015that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1016width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1017to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1018
1019Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1020specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1021face doesn't exist.
1022
1023+++
1024**** Scalable fonts
1025
1026Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1027since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1028servers.
1029
1030To enable scalable font use, set the variable
b246b1f6 1031`scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
a933dad1
DL
1032scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1033Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1034scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1035that list. Example:
1036
1037 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1038
1039allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1040
1041+++
1042*** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1043
1044- Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1045
1046Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1047is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1048string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1049
1050If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1051the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1052FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1053POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1054SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1055These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1056if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1057REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1058the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1059of the face font sort order.
1060
79214ddf 1061- Function: x-font-family-list
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1062
1063Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1064omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1065(FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1066non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1067
1068- Variable: font-list-limit
1069
1070Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1071won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1072matching font. The default is currently 100.
1073
1074+++
1075*** Setting face attributes.
1076
1077For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1078with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1079implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1080`face-attribute'.
1081
1082Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1083symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1084
1085The following attributes are recognized:
1086
1087`:family'
1088
1089VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1090or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1091and `?' are allowed.
1092
1093`:width'
1094
1095VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1096It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1097`condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1098`extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1099
1100`:height'
1101
1102VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
11031/10 pt.
1104
1105`:weight'
1106
1107VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1108symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1109`semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1110
1111`:slant'
1112
1113VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1114symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1115`reverse-oblique'.
1116
1117`:foreground', `:background'
1118
1119VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1120
1121`:underline'
1122
1123VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1124VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1125a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1126don't underline.
1127
1128`:overline'
1129
1130VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1131VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1132string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1133overline.
1134
1135`:strike-through'
1136
1137VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1138striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1139face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1140is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1141
1142`:box'
1143
1144VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1145around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1146VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1147of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1148and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1149VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1150:color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1151the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1152specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1153defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1154the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1155color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1156should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1157like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1158that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1159the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1160box.
1161
1162`:inverse-video'
1163
1164VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1165inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1166
1167`:stipple'
1168
1169If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1170The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1171searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1172HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1173is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1174explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1175
1176For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1177and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1178
1179`:font'
1180
1181Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1182XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1183is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1184versions of Emacs.
1185
1186For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1187be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1188must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1189
1190Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1191`defface'.
1192
1193*** Face attributes and X resources
1194
1195The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1196from X resources:
1197
1198 Face attribute X resource class
1199-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1200 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1201 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1202 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1203 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1204 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1205 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1206 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1207 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1208 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1209 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1210 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1211 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1212 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
79214ddf 1213 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
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1214 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1215 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1216 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1217 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1218 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1219
1220+++
1221*** Text property `face'.
1222
1223The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1224specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1225specification can be
1226
12271. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1228
12292. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1230 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1231 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1232 for face attribute names.
1233
12343. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1235 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1236 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1237
1238+++
1239** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1240
1241The function `face-register-tty-color' can be used to define colors
1242for use on TTY frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the
1243terminal. Emacs defines a couple of default color mappings by
1244default. You can get defined colors with a call to
1245`tty-defined-colors'. The function `face-clear-tty-colors' can be
1246used to clear the mapping table.
1247
1248+++
1249** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
a933dad1 1250
463cac2d 1251This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
a933dad1
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1252
1253The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1254end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1255Otherwise, it returns zero.
1256
463cac2d
GM
1257** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
1258
1259There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
1260buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
1261text-property.
1262
1263Certain functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
1264forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
1265to the boundary between fields (beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
1266not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
1267commands continue into the next field if repeated).
1268
1269The new function constrain-to-field may be used to achieve similar
1270behavior; other new field functions include field-beginning, field-end,
1271erase-field, and field-string.
1272
1273Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
1274a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that many
1275editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
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1276
1277+++
1278** Image support.
1279
1280Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
1281strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
1282(AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
1283replaces the display of the characters having that property.
1284
1285If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
1286`(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
1287AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
1288window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
1289area.
1290
1291IMAGE is an image specification.
1292
1293*** Image specifications
1294
1295Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
1296is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
1297specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
1298symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'.
1299
1300The following is a list of properties all image types share.
1301
1302`:ascent ASCENT'
1303
1304ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
1305of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
1306
1307`:margin MARGIN'
1308
79214ddf 1309MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
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1310margin around the image. Default is 0.
1311
1312`:relief RELIEF'
1313
1314RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
1315around an image.
1316
1317`:algorithm ALGO'
1318
1319Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
1320be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
1321supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
1322which is intended to display images "disabled."
1323
1324`:heuristic-mask BG'
1325
1326If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
1327background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
1328determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
1329corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
1330the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
1331be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
1332background of the image.
1333
1334`:file FILE'
1335
1336Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
1337search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
1338building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
1339may be present in the image specification.
1340
1341
1342*** Supported image types
1343
b246b1f6 1344**** XBM, image type `xbm'.
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1345
1346XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
1347properties supported are
1348
1349`:foreground FG'
1350
1351FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
1352is the frame's foreground.
1353
1354`:background FG'
1355
1356BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
1357the frame's background color.
1358
1359XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
1360case, the image specification must contain the following properties
1361instead of a `:file' property.
1362
1363`:width WIDTH'
1364
1365WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
1366
1367`:height HEIGHT'
1368
1369HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
1370
1371`:data DATA'
1372
1373DATA must be either
1374
1375 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
1376 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
1377
1378 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
1379
1380 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
1381 bitmap.
1382
1383**** XPM, image type `xpm'
1384
1385XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
1386`xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
1387found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
1388`--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
1389
1390Additional image properties supported are:
1391
1392`:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
1393
1394SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
1395name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
1396name.
1397
1398XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
1399add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
1400
1401`:data DATA'
1402
79214ddf 1403DATA must be a string containing an XPM image. The contents of the
a933dad1
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1404string are of the same format as that of XPM files.
1405
1406The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
1407to display compressed images.
1408
1409**** PBM, image type `pbm'
1410
1411PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
1412mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
1413defined.
1414
1415**** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
1416
1417Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
1418package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1419properties defined.
1420
1421**** TIFF, image type `tiff'
1422
1423Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
1424package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1425properties defined.
1426
1427**** GIF, image type `gif'
1428
1429Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
1430`libungif-4.1.0', or later.
1431
1432Additional image properties supported are:
1433
1434`:index INDEX'
1435
1436INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
1437multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
1438
1439This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
1440For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
1441at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
1442every 0.1 seconds.
1443
1444(defun show-anim (file max)
1445 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
1446 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
1447
1448(defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
1449 (when (= idx max)
1450 (setq idx 0))
1451 (let ((img (create-image file nil :index idx)))
1452 (save-excursion
1453 (set-buffer buffer)
1454 (goto-char (point-min))
1455 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
1456 (insert-image img "x"))
1457 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
1458
1459**** PNG, image type `png'
1460
1461Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
1462package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1463properties defined.
1464
1465**** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
1466
1467Additional image properties supported are:
1468
1469`:pt-width WIDTH'
1470
1471WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
b246b1f6 1472integer. This is a required property.
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1473
1474`:pt-height HEIGHT'
1475
1476HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
b246b1f6 1477must be a integer. This is an required property.
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1478
1479`:bounding-box BOX'
1480
1481BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
1482the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
1483files. This is an required property.
1484
1485Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
1486lisp/gs.el.
1487
1488*** Lisp interface.
1489
79214ddf
FP
1490The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
1491which are supported in the current configuration.
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1492
1493Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
1494they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
1495The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
1496manually.
1497
1498*** Simplified image API, image.el
1499
1500The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
1501creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
1502can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
1503define an image based on available image types. The functions
1504`put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
1505buffer.
1506
1507+++
1508** Display margins.
1509
1510Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
1511and images.
1512
1513To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
1514`left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
1515`set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
1516obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
1517`right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
1518the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
1519of the display margins.
1520
1521You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
1522containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
1523one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
1524string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
1525in this file).
1526
1527+++
1528** Help display
1529
1530Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
1531moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
1532`help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
1533that have a `help-echo' property.
1534
1535The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
1536items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
1537If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
1538evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
1539tool-bar item is used.
1540
1541The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
1542help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
1543help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
1544
1545+++
1546** Vertical fractional scrolling.
1547
1548The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
1549This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
1550
1551The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
1552scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
1553The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
1554scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
1555used.
1556
79214ddf
FP
1557 (global-set-key [A-down]
1558 #'(lambda ()
a933dad1 1559 (interactive)
79214ddf 1560 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1 1561 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
79214ddf 1562 (global-set-key [A-up]
a933dad1
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1563 #'(lambda ()
1564 (interactive)
79214ddf 1565 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1
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1566 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
1567
1568+++
1569** New hook `fontification-functions'.
1570
1571Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
1572when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
1573variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
1574is called with one argument, POS.
1575
1576At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
1577characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
1578as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
1579property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
1580`fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
1581
1582+++
1583** Tool bar support.
1584
1585Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
1586parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
1587controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
1588suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
1589`auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
1590automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
1591
1592*** Tool bar item definitions
1593
1594Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
1595`tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
1596where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
79214ddf 1597
a933dad1
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1598CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
1599evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
1600the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
1601property (see below).
79214ddf 1602
a933dad1
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1603BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
1604binding are currently ignored.
1605
1606The following properties are recognized:
1607
1608`:enable FORM'.
79214ddf 1609
a933dad1
DL
1610FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
1611or disabled.
79214ddf 1612
a933dad1 1613`:visible FORM'
79214ddf 1614
a933dad1 1615FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
79214ddf 1616
a933dad1
DL
1617`:filter FUNCTION'
1618
1619FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
1620FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
1621used instead of BINDING to display this item.
79214ddf 1622
a933dad1
DL
1623`:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
1624
1625TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
1626and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
79214ddf 1627
a933dad1
DL
1628`:image IMAGES'
1629
1630IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
1631image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
1632meaning of each of the four elements:
1633
1634 Index Use when item is
1635 ----------------------------------------
1636 0 enabled and selected
1637 1 enabled and deselected
1638 2 disabled and selected
1639 3 disabled and deselected
79214ddf 1640
a933dad1 1641`:help HELP-STRING'.
79214ddf 1642
a933dad1
DL
1643Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
1644is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
1645
1646*** Tool-bar-related variables.
1647
1648If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
1649resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
1650than 1/4 of the frame's size.
1651
79214ddf 1652If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
a933dad1
DL
1653raised when the mouse moves over them.
1654
1655You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
1656`tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
1657pixels. Default is 1.
1658
1659You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
1660`tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
1661
1662*** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
1663
1664You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
79214ddf 1665a tool bar item. If
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DL
1666
1667 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
1668 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
1669 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
1670
1671is the original tool bar item definition, then
1672
1673 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
1674
1675makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
1676item.
1677
1678** Mode line changes.
1679
1680+++
1681*** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
1682
1683The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
1684that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
1685a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
1686
16871. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
1688a `local-map' text property.
1689
16902. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
1691that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
1692
16933. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
1694is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
1695`local-map' property.
1696
1697The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
1698properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
1699example.
1700
1701+++
1702*** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
1703variable mode-line-format to nil.
1704
1705+++
1706*** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
1707
1708This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
1709`header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
1710completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
1711`default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
1712line.
1713
1714The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
1715`header-line'.
1716
1717The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
1718position in the header-line.
1719
1720+++
1721** Text property `display'
1722
1723The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
1724also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
1725`display' property should be a display specification, as described
1726below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
1727
1728*** Variable width and height spaces
1729
1730To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
1731specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
1732`(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
1733area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
1734marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
1735displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
1736simpler form STRETCH as property value.
1737
1738The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
1739PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
1740properties described below.
1741
1742The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
1743characters having the `display' property.
1744
1745- :width WIDTH
1746
1747Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
1748character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
1749
1750- :relative-width FACTOR
1751
1752Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
1753first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
1754same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
1755width of that character by FACTOR.
1756
1757- :align-to HPOS
1758
1759Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
1760value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
1761
1762Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
1763
1764- :height HEIGHT
1765
1766Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
1767normal line height.
1768
1769- :relative-height FACTOR
1770
1771The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
1772of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
1773
1774- :ascent ASCENT
1775
1776Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
1777used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
1778baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
1779equal to 100.
1780
1781You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
1782
1783*** Images
1784
1785A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
1786. IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
1787in the display, the characters having this display specification in
1788their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
1789the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
1790`(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
1791area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
1792the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
1793as display specification.
1794
1795*** Other display properties
1796
1797- :space-width FACTOR
1798
1799Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
1800should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
1801integer or float.
1802
1803- :height HEIGHT
1804
1805Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
1806
1807If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
1808means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
1809the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
1810``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
1811a font is available counts as a step.
1812
1813If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
1814as tall as the frame's default font.
1815
1816If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
1817height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
1818
1819Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
1820`height' bound to the current specified font height.
1821
1822- :raise FACTOR
1823
1824FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
1825font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
1826raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
1827amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
1828`:height' subproperty.
1829
1830*** Conditional display properties
1831
1832All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
1833has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
1834applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
1835During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
1836the text having the `display' property.
1837
1838The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
1839`(:when t SPEC)'.
1840
1841+++
1842** New menu separator types.
1843
1844Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
1845item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
1846treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
1847to specify other menu separator types.
1848
1849- `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
1850
1851No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
1852separator occurs.
1853
1854- `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
1855
1856A single line in the menu's foreground color.
1857
1858- `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
1859
1860A double line in the menu's foreground color.
1861
1862- `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
1863
1864A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1865
1866- `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
1867
1868A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1869
1870- `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
1871
1872A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
1873displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
1874
1875- `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
1876
1877A single line with 3D raised appearance.
1878
1879- `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
1880
1881A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
1882
1883- `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
1884
1885A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
1886
1887- `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
1888
1889Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1890
1891- `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
1892
1893Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
1894
1895- `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
1896
1897Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1898
1899- `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
1900
1901Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
1902
1903Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
1904the corresponding single-line separators.
1905
1906+++
1907** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
1908
1909The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
1910`scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
1911Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
1912that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
1913default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
1914default background is the background color of the frame, and the
1915default foreground is black.
1916
1917The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
1918(class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
1919`ScrollBarBackground').
1920
1921Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
1922settings for scroll bar colors.
1923
1924+++
1925** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
1926display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
1927
1928---
1929** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
1930starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
1931on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
1932line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
1933the original window start.
1934
1935---
1936** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
1937`hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
1938now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
1939
1940+++
1941** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
1942
1943A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
1944`window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
1945windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
1946other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
1947
1948The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
1949fixed-width and fixed-height.
1950
1951 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
1952
1953A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
1954fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
1955window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
1956change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
1957temporarily to nil, for example
1958
1959 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
1960 (enlarge-window 10))
1961
79214ddf 1962Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
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1963or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
1964\f
1965* Changes in Emacs 20.4
1966
1967** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
1968
1969You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
1970Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
1971`.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
1972
1973If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
1974is the one that is used.
1975
1976** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
1977the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
1978Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
1979separate from the command's regular output.
1980Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
1981says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
1982In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
1983the buffer name.
1984
1985When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
1986output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
1987it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
1988cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
1989
1990** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
1991the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
1992is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
1993created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
1994
1995** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
1996example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
1997match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
1998quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
1999
2000** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
2001now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
2002if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
2003they never ignore case.
2004
2005** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
2006under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
2007applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
2008of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
2009just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
2010convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
2011part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
2012
2013If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
2014the same format that was used in the file before.
2015
2016You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
2017`inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
2018
2019** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
2020renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
2021This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
2022
2023** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
2024The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
2025buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2026your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2027is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2028end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2029Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2030
2031The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2032eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2033control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2034format. You can now customize these variables.
2035
2036** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2037filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2038filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2039enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2040
2041** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2042in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2043windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2044
2045** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2046dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2047doesn't have any effect.
2048
2049** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2050not one per buffer.
2051
2052** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2053use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2054 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2055
2056** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2057To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2058`auto-show-mode' command.
2059
2060** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2061avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2062versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2063choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2064occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2065
2066** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2067cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2068
2069** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2070character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2071feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2072
2073** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2074the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2075interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2076and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2077
2078** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2079
2080The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2081that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2082one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2083codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2084set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2085
2086Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2087from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2088
2089IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2090equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2091a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2092`?' on other systems.
2093
2094IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2095feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2096Unix.
2097
2098Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2099current codepage when it starts.
2100
2101** Mail changes
2102
2103*** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2104default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2105default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2106sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2107buffer-file-coding-system.
2108
2109You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2110sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2111mail.
2112
2113*** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2114if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2115Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2116list of possible coding systems.
2117
2118** CC Mode changes
2119
2120*** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2121modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2122longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2123docstring for details.
2124
2125*** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2126symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2127found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2128prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2129lineup functions use this feature currently.
2130
2131*** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2132"finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2133
2134*** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2135"catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2136
2137*** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2138from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2139symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2140c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2141anonymous classes.
2142
2143*** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2144syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2145
2146*** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2147inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2148support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2149function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2150
2151*** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2152(i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2153brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2154c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2155(brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2156
2157*** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2158
2159*** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2160
2161*** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2162for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2163
2164*** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2165
2166*** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2167associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2168This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2169circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2170class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2171
2172** Gnus changes.
2173
2174*** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2175added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2176Gnus manual for the full story.
2177
2178*** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2179before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2180group, which is created automatically.
2181
2182*** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2183values.
2184
2185*** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2186
2187*** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2188outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2189
2190*** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2191`C-u C-c C-c'.
2192
2193*** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2194
2195*** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2196re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2197
2198*** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2199
2200*** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2201Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2202
2203*** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2204`a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2205
2206*** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2207control over simplification.
2208
2209*** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2210
2211*** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2212limit.
2213
2214*** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2215
2216*** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2217
79214ddf 2218*** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
a933dad1
DL
2219If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2220rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2221
2222*** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2223`a' forces normal posting method.
2224
2225*** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2226-- `W d'.
2227
2228*** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2229to a non-nil value.
2230
2231*** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2232where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2233
2234*** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2235has been added.
2236
2237*** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2238
2239*** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2240
2241*** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2242`gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2243
2244*** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2245`message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2246
2247*** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
2248
2249*** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
2250been added.
2251
2252*** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
2253`gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
2254
2255*** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
2256updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
2257
2258*** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
2259
2260*** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
2261
2262*** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
2263
2264** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
2265
2266*** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
2267options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
2268nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
2269
2270*** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
2271TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
2272of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
2273TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
2274can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
2275
2276*** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
2277All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
2278but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
2279the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
2280
2281*** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
2282the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
2283buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
2284mismatch.
2285
2286** Changes to RefTeX mode
2287
2288*** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
2289file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
2290
2291*** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
2292lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
2293characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
2294removed from the label.
2295
2296*** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
2297a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
2298
2299*** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
2300customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
2301
2302*** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
2303`reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
79214ddf 2304expressions.
a933dad1
DL
2305
2306*** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
2307
2308** New/deleted modes and packages
2309
2310*** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
2311SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
2312
2313*** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
2314editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
2315SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
2316
2317*** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
2318changes with a special face.
2319
2320*** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
2321this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
2322Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
2323\f
2324* MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
2325
2326** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
2327This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
2328conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
2329and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
2330check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
2331
2332The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
2333Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
2334distribution when the config.bat script is run.
2335
2336** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
2337MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
2338controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
2339directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
2340Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
2341on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
2342string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
2343program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
2344printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
2345
2346** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
2347output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
2348available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
2349input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
2350temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
2351program.
2352
2353An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
2354and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
2355programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
2356automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
2357as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
2358ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
2359
2360** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
2361a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
2362MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
2363was not documented clearly before.
2364
2365** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
2366This includes Tetris and Snake.
2367\f
2368* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
2369
2370** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
2371return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
2372They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
2373meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
2374
2375** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
2376WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
2377and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
2378
2379** Changes in the file-attributes function.
2380
2381*** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
2382It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
2383
2384*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
2385the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
2386integers.
2387
2388** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
2389files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
2390arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
2391file names and attributes are returned.
2392
2393** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
2394sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
2395accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
2396It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
2397returns the result.
2398
2399** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
2400to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
2401
2402** New functions for base64 conversion:
2403
2404The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
2405into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
2406performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
2407optionally.
2408
2409Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
2410job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
2411
2412**
2413The new function process-running-child-p
2414will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
2415terminal to its own child process.
2416
2417** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
2418when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
2419to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
2420itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
2421
2422** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
2423be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
2424
2425** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
2426:included is an alias for :visible.
2427
2428easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
2429easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
2430to move or copy menu entries.
2431
2432** Multibyte editing changes
2433
2434*** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
2435an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
2436make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
2437work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
2438char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
2439 (setq char (sref str idx)
2440 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
2441The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
2442
2443If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
2444(say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
2445 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
2446
2447*** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
2448region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
2449deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
2450
2451 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
2452
2453This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
2454across the boundary.
2455
2456*** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
2457`unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
2458 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
2459 contains 8-bit characters.
2460 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
2461 contains invalid characters.
2462
2463*** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
2464text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
2465preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
2466text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
2467way.
2468
2469*** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
2470If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
2471end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
2472prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
2473
2474*** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
2475compose Thai characters in a string.
2476
2477** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
2478argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
2479for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
2480menus should always use the third argument.
2481
2482** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
2483read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
2484arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
2485input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
2486
2487** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
2488of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
2489programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
2490inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
2491
2492** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
2493the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
2494returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
2495echo area contents.
2496
2497 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
2498
2499** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
2500NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
2501requested feature cannot be loaded.
2502
2503** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
2504foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
79214ddf 2505means to clear out that attribute.
a933dad1
DL
2506
2507** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
2508gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
2509
2510** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
2511read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
2512unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
2513end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
2514
2515** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
2516the gap of the current buffer.
2517
2518** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
2519to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
2520current buffer.
2521
2522** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
2523facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
2524These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
2525it back in after any modifications have been made.
2526\f
2527* Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
2528
2529** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
2530the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
2531/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
2532directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
2533subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
2534
2535Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
2536names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
2537Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
2538which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
2539these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
2540
2541Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
2542starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
2543time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
2544
2545This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
2546Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
2547to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
2548subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
2549`.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
2550results.
2551
2552** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
2553GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
2554that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
2555fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
2556\f
2557* Changes in Emacs 20.3
2558
2559** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
2560including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
2561it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
2562perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
2563
2564** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
2565specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
2566region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
2567further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
2568command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
2569within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
2570are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
2571region.
2572
2573In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
2574selective undo.
2575
2576** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
2577unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
2578buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
2579effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
2580Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
2581
2582The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
2583though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
2584-*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
2585load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
2586
2587** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
2588no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
2589enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
2590something that most users not do.
2591
2592** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
2593operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
2594The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
2595applications.
2596
2597C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
2598pasting operations.
2599
2600** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
2601setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
2602like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
2603printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
2604`ps-printer-name'.
2605
2606** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
2607minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
2608any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
2609except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
2610incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
2611hits a new word.
2612
2613Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
2614Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
2615to be confused by TeX commands.
2616
2617You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
2618correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
2619clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
2620of various alternative replacements and actions.
2621
2622Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
2623the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
2624corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
2625alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
2626flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
2627
2628Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
2629flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
2630
2631** Changes in input method usage.
2632
2633Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
2634the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
2635respectively.
2636
2637You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
2638
2639If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
2640of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
2641
2642The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
2643that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
2644
2645 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
2646
2647 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
2648
2649 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
2650 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
2651
2652 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
79214ddf 2653 given in the following case:
a933dad1
DL
2654 o When you are using a complex input method.
2655 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
2656
2657If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
2658input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
2659and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
2660setting it to t is helpful.
2661
2662The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
2663
2664In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
2665keys:
2666 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
2667 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
2668 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
2669These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
2670environment.
2671
2672** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
2673names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
2674minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
2675get
2676
2677 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
2678
2679which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
2680
2681Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
2682Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
2683
2684** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
2685at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
2686its owner and group.
2687
2688** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
2689Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
2690
2691** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
2692contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
2693
2694** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
2695which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
2696in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
2697by the left edge of the rectangle.
2698
2699** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
2700increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
2701C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
2702for writing keyboard macros.
2703
2704** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
2705files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
2706frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
2707the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
2708additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
2709info.
2710
2711** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
2712
2713** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
2714query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
2715contents only.
2716
2717** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
2718confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
2719the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
2720says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
2721
2722** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
2723non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
2724literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
2725
2726** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
2727now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
2728Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
2729inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
2730
2731** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
2732failure if the command produces no output.
2733
2734** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
2735manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
2736the mouse.
2737
2738** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
2739mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
2740function and variable names.
2741
2742** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
2743reading specific files. This has higher priority than
2744file-coding-system-alist.
2745
2746** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
2747t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
2748converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
2749the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
2750according to the current fontset.
2751
2752** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
2753
2754The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
2755that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
2756nonascii-insert-offset.
2757
2758For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
2759enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
2760nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
2761characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
2762
2763** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
2764an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
2765
2766** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
2767letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
2768
2769** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
2770are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
2771command keys.
2772
2773** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
2774user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
2775
2776Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
2777user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
2778all variables that have documentation.
2779
2780** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
2781shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
2782that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
2783minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
2784it should show; the default is 20.
2785
2786Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
2787the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
2788of your input.
2789
2790** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
2791all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
2792recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
2793argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
2794the customizable options which were changed since that version.
2795Newly added options are included as well.
2796
2797If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
2798then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
2799for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
2800
2801This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
2802Customize menu.
2803
2804** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
2805the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
2806
2807** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
2808buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
2809invoked.
2810
2811** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
2812that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
2813The default is 1.
2814
2815** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
2816syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
2817new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
2818(C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
2819sensibly.
2820
2821** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
2822
2823** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
2824value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
2825two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
2826
2827** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
2828reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
2829for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
2830every night.
2831
2832** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
2833the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
2834
2835** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
2836read and post multi-lingual articles.
2837
2838** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
2839doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
2840be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
2841outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
2842the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
79214ddf 2843made invisible again.
a933dad1
DL
2844
2845** Mail reading and sending changes
2846
2847*** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
2848the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
2849changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
2850toggle.
2851
2852*** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
2853now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
2854summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
2855the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
2856rmail-default-body-file.
2857
2858*** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
2859longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
2860handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
2861
2862*** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
2863it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
2864is evaluated to insert the signature.
2865
2866*** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
2867outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
2868handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
2869putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
2870transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
2871especially interested in trying feedmail.
2872
2873feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
2874feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
2875provided by feedmail are:
2876
2877**** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
2878stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
2879there is also a queue for draft messages
2880
2881**** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
2882be prompted for confirmation
2883
2884**** does smart filling of address headers
2885
2886**** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
2887the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
2888can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
2889
2890**** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
2891the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
2892/usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
2893function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
2894
2895** Dired changes
2896
2897*** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
2898files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
2899
2900*** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
2901run Dired on the directory name at point.
2902
2903*** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
2904files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
2905for a specified regexp.
2906
2907** VC Changes
2908
2909*** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
2910conveniently.
2911
2912*** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
2913faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
2914Dired.
2915
2916VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
2917directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
2918listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
2919currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
2920
2921You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
2922then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
2923vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
2924control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
2925on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
2926
2927All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
2928is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
2929`v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
2930the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
2931`vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
2932
2933The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
2934toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
79214ddf 2935VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
a933dad1
DL
2936`* l', to mark all files currently locked.
2937
2938Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
2939ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
2940command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
2941
2942*** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
2943file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
2944session to resolve them.
2945
2946Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
2947resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
2948contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
2949uses as well).
2950
2951*** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
2952command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
2953you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
2954either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
2955branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
2956If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
2957using ediff.
2958
2959** Changes in Font Lock
2960
2961*** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
2962are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
2963use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
2964unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
2965compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
2966
2967** Frame name display changes
2968
2969*** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
2970frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
2971raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
2972when many frames are invisible or iconified.
2973
2974*** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
2975frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
2976menu.
2977
2978** Comint (subshell) changes
2979
2980*** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
2981subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
2982with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
2983
2984*** There are new commands in Comint mode.
2985
2986C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
2987that is, the line after the last line you got.
2988You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
2989
2990C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
2991send the current line together with the following line, when you send
2992the following line.
2993
2994C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
2995which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
2996previously sent input.
2997
2998C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
2999it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
3000as the search string.
3001
3002*** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
3003automatically in compilation-mode windows.
3004
3005** C mode changes
3006
3007*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
3008and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
3009assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
79214ddf 3010definition.
a933dad1
DL
3011
3012*** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
3013(i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
3014Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
3015style is still the default however.
3016
3017*** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
3018
3019*** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
3020are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
3021them. They do not have key bindings by default.
3022
3023*** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
3024and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
3025
3026*** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3027namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3028
3029*** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3030makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3031
3032*** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3033c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3034
3035*** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3036should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3037package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3038variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3039
3040** Changes to hippie-expand.
3041
79214ddf 3042*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
a933dad1
DL
3043non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3044which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3045
3046*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3047non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3048expanding dynamically.
3049
3050*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3051non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3052
3053*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3054non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3055this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3056expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3057
3058*** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3059
3060** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3061
3062*** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3063bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3064automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3065bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3066against the first word in the title.
3067
3068*** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3069capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3070bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
79214ddf 3071lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
a933dad1 3072lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
79214ddf 3073bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
a933dad1
DL
3074
3075*** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3076generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3077replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3078bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3079
3080** Changes in vcursor.el.
3081
3082*** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3083and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3084variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3085entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3086`vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3087in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3088
3089*** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3090Editing group once the package is loaded.
3091
3092*** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3093generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3094vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3095
3096*** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3097vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3098
3099** Ispell changes.
3100
79214ddf
FP
3101*** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3102buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
a933dad1
DL
3103are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3104
3105*** Generic region skipping implemented.
3106A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3107and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3108defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
79214ddf 3109include:
a933dad1
DL
3110
3111 o URLs are automatically skipped
3112 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3113
3114*** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3115
3116** Changes to RefTeX mode
3117
3118RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3119large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3120re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3121section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3122
3123*** New recursive parser.
3124
3125The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3126entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3127recursive parser scans the individual files.
3128
3129*** Parsing only part of a document.
79214ddf 3130
a933dad1
DL
3131Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3132partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3133the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3134
3135 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3136
3137*** Storing parsing information in a file.
3138
3139This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3140
3141 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3142
3143*** Using multiple selection buffers
3144
3145If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3146for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3147
3148 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3149
3150*** References to external documents.
3151
3152The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3153documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3154documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3155macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3156RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3157the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3158The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3159
3160*** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3161
3162The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3163and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3164
3165Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3166the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3167
3168*** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3169
3170The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3171buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3172
3173*** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3174
3175The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3176contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3177`reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3178have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3179enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3180at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3181more.
3182
3183*** Support for the varioref package
3184
3185The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3186
3187*** New hooks
3188
3189Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3190and citations are created. These hooks are
3191`reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3192`reftex-format-cite-function'.
3193
3194*** Citations outside LaTeX
3195
3196The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3197a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3198
3199*** Short context is no longer fontified.
3200
3201The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3202fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3203fontified, use
3204
3205 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3206
3207** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3208With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3209the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3210directories that contain the same file name.
3211
3212Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3213Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3214file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3215Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3216have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3217names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3218directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3219directory.
3220
3221** New modes and packages
3222
3223*** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3224It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3225it, but some do not.
3226
3227*** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3228code.
3229
3230*** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3231current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3232around in a buffer.
3233
3234Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3235
3236*** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3237uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3238be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3239established system of notation similar to Chess.
3240
3241*** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3242documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3243guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3244
3245*** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3246available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
3247system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
3248simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
3249functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
3250the like.
3251
3252*** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
3253identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
3254
3255*** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
3256within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
3257used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
3258the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
3259
3260*** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
3261
3262 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
3263 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
3264 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
3265 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
3266 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
3267 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
3268 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
3269 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
3270 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
3271 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
3272 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
3273
3274 Platform-specific modes:
3275
3276 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
3277 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
3278 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
3279 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
3280 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
3281 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
3282 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
3283 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
3284 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
3285\f
3286* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3287
3288** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
3289use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
3290That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
3291Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
3292
3293Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
3294you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
3295consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
3296
3297** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
3298and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
3299specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
3300searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
3301
3302** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
3303multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
3304character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
3305environment.
3306
3307** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
3308take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
3309string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
3310current input method for reading this one event.
3311
3312** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
3313now control whether to output certain characters as
3314backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
3315non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
3316characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
3317in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
3318\f
3319* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3320
3321** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
3322of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
3323
3324** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
3325in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
3326always increases point by 1.
3327
3328The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
3329considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
3330
3331See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
3332
3333** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
3334Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
3335default value changed. For example,
3336
3337 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
3338 :type 'integer
3339 :group 'foo
3340 :version "20.3")
3341
79214ddf 3342 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
a933dad1
DL
3343 :version "20.3")
3344
3345If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
3346default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
3347is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
3348`:version' in the top level group.
3349
3350This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
3351
3352** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
3353starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
3354
3355However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
3356symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
3357support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
3358to themselves.
3359
3360If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
3361this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
3362values whatever.
3363
3364** There is a new debugger command, R.
3365It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
3366in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
3367
3368** Frame-local variables.
3369
3370You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
3371the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
3372local bindings for that variable.
3373
3374These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
3375frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
3376modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
3377parameter name.
3378
3379Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
3380Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
3381active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
3382that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
3383
3384It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
3385clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
3386very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
3387through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
3388
3389** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
3390"symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
3391evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
3392makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
3393See the documentation in sregex.el.
3394
3395** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
3396is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
3397parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
3398The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
3399
3400** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
3401If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
3402
3403** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
3404known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
3405define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
3406
3407** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
3408when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
3409it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
3410history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
3411
3412The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
3413return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
3414empty input.
3415
3416** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
3417for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
3418`iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
3419Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
3420`read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
3421
3422** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
3423echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
3424a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
3425default password to use if the user enters nothing.
3426
3427** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
3428specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
3429function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
3430place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
3431non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
3432
3433** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
3434If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
3435up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
3436end of the window, even if this requires computation.
3437
3438** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
3439which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
3440If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
3441
3442** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
3443holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
3444was directed to display this buffer.
3445
3446** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
3447with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
3448describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
3449other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
3450set-window-configuration.
3451
3452** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
3453window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
3454positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
3455windows and the choice of buffers to display.
3456
3457** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
3458override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
3459look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
3460
3461If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
3462non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
3463map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
3464
3465minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
3466and it is meant to be set by major modes.
3467
3468** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
3469except that it discards all text properties from the result.
3470
3471** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
3472USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
3473floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
3474
3475** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
3476to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
3477in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
3478it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
3479
3480** Menu changes
3481
3482*** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
3483keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
3484better supported.
3485
3486The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
3487a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
3488you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
3489can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
3490then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
3491
3492*** A new format for menu items is supported.
3493
3494In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
3495 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
3496defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
3497starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
3498
3499The format is:
3500 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
3501 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
3502where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
3503string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
3504The supported properties include
3505
3506:enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3507 item is enabled.
3508:visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3509 item should appear in the menu.
79214ddf 3510:filter FILTER-FN
a933dad1
DL
3511 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
3512 which will be REAL-BINDING.
3513 It should return a binding to use instead.
3514:keys DESCRIPTION
3515 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
3516 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
3517 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
3518:key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
3519 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
3520 keyboard binding.
3521:key-sequence nil
3522 This means that the command normally has no
3523 keyboard equivalent.
3524:help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
3525:button (TYPE . SELECTED)
3526 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
3527 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
3528 value says whether this button is currently selected.
3529
3530Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
3531Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
3532
3533(menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
3534
3535** New event types
3536
3537*** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
3538mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
3539corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
3540which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
3541
3542 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
3543
3544where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3545same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
3546indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
3547negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
3548the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
3549forward, away from the user.
3550
3551As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3552
3553*** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
3554files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
3555and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
3556filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
3557loaded into Emacs. The format is:
3558
3559 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
3560
3561where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3562same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
3563that were dragged and dropped.
3564
3565As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3566
3567** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
3568
3569*** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
3570any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
3571to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
3572
3573*** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
3574can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
3575that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
3576
3577*** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
3578in Emacs 19 and before.
3579
3580The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
3581The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
3582
3583*** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
3584buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
3585unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
3586representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
3587
3588This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
3589as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
3590viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
3591one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
3592will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
3593
3594This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
3595representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
3596(including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
3597consistent with the new representation.
3598
3599*** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
3600representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
3601about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
3602however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3603
3604The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
3605nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
3606using the table nonascii-translation-table.
3607
3608*** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
3609representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
3610representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3611
3612The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
3613loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
3614is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
3615
3616*** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3617which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
3618
3619*** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3620which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
3621
3622*** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
3623portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
3624so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
3625You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
3626
3627*** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
3628it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
3629
3630*** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
3631convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
3632buffer or string being searched.
3633
3634One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
3635[...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
3636searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
3637searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
3638obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
3639you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
3640expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
3641
3642*** Structure of coding system changed.
3643
3644All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
3645by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
3646which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
3647as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
3648vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
3649your own alias name of a coding system by the function
3650define-coding-system-alias.
3651
3652The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
3653the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
3654access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
3655pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
3656character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
3657safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
3658'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
3659`iso-8859-1'.
3660
3661Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
3662The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
3663coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
3664(coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
3665
3666Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
3667also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
3668are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
3669the other character sets and read it back correctly.
3670
3671*** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
3672proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
3673This function requires a user interaction.
3674
3675*** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
3676find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
3677select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
3678systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
3679a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
3680select-safe-coding-system.
3681
3682*** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
3683decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
3684last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
3685was done.
3686
3687*** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
3688used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
3689coding systems used by some specific language environment.
3690
3691*** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
3692return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
3693characters are found, they now return a list of single element
3694`undecided' or its subsidiaries.
3695
3696*** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
3697coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
3698coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
3699converted.
3700
3701*** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
3702coding system for communicating with other X clients.
3703
3704*** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
3705character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
3706character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
3707each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
3708either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
3709range of characters.
3710
3711*** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
3712Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
3713
3714*** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
3715in the current buffer at position POS.
3716
3717*** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
3718input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
3719function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
3720character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
3721event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
3722binding input-method-function to nil.
3723
3724The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
3725method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
3726input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
3727the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
3728not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
3729
3730The input method function is not called when reading the second and
3731subsequent events of a key sequence.
3732
3733*** You can customize any language environment by using
3734set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
3735
3736The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
3737customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
3738instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
3739environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
3740exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
3741\f
3742* Changes in Emacs 20.1
3743
3744** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
3745options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
3746at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
3747tree structure.
3748
3749M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
3750user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
3751
3752With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
3753session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
3754in your .emacs file.)
3755
3756** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
3757You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
3758
3759** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
3760This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
3761
3762** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
3763immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
3764kills the region.
3765
3766The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
3767delete the character before point, as usual.
3768
3769** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
3770on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
3771by setting search-highlight to nil.)
3772
3773** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
3774insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
3775the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
3776onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
3777history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
3778past.)
3779
3780** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
3781This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
3782in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
3783TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
3784makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
3785
3786As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
3787and is an alias for it.
3788
3789If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
3790use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
3791
3792** Scrolling changes
3793
3794*** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
3795position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
3796
3797In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
3798on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
3799where it started.
3800
3801*** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
3802move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
3803screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
3804does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
3805
3806*** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
3807top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
3808comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
3809recenters the window.
3810
3811** International character set support (MULE)
3812
3813Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
3814including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
3815Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
3816Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
3817features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
3818MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
3819
3820Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
3821coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
3822character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
3823variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
3824into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
3825
3826Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
3827generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
3828supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
3829language, to make it possible to type them.
3830
3831The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
3832character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
3833
3834The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
3835to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
3836
3837You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
3838
3839 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
3840
3841Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
3842characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
3843argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
3844already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
3845characters for their work until they want to change.
3846
3847*** Input methods
3848
3849An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
3850specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
3851has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
3852the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
3853support several input methods.
3854
3855The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
3856another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
3857work.
3858
3859A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
3860characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
3861composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
3862consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
3863sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
3864letter.
3865
3866The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
3867by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
3868First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
3869marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
3870mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
3871
3872None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
3873they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
3874phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
3875converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
3876
3877Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
3878word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
3879typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
3880the first guess is wrong.
3881
3882*** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
3883turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
3884
3885If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
3886byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
3887they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
3888the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
3889
3890However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
3891use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
3892includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
3893translate automatically to and from either one.
3894
3895*** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
3896
3897Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
3898file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
3899sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
3900what you want.
3901
3902If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
3903example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
3904system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
3905multibyte characters in that buffer.
3906
3907If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
3908character conversion as well.
3909
3910*** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
3911
3912A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
3913Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
3914requires using many fonts.
3915
3916Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
3917collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
3918
3919A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
3920the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
3921have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
3922you would use a font.
3923
3924If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
3925specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
3926display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
3927
3928The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
3929(that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
3930characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
3931or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
3932and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
3933
3934*** Defining fontsets.
3935
3936Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
3937chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
3938with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
3939
3940Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
3941of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
3942`fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
3943standard fontset are created automatically.
3944
3945If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
3946argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
3947FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
3948with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
3949name is `fontset-startup'.
3950
3951Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
3952The resource value should have this form:
3953 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
3954FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
3955 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
3956 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
3957 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
3958The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
3959of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
3960CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
3961FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
3962
3963Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
3964last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
3965You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
3966
3967For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
3968font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
3969following resource,
3970 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
3971the font for ASCII is generated as below:
3972 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
3973Here is the substitution rule:
3974 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
3975 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
3976 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
3977 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
3978 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
3979
3980The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
3981fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
3982that function explicitly to create a fontset.
3983
3984With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
3985like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
3986name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
3987fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
3988fontsets.
3989
3990*** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
3991defaults for a particular choice of language.
3992
3993Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
3994method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
3995visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
3996already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
3997language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
3998system for new files that you create.
3999
4000It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
4001set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
4002whole Emacs session.
4003
4004For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
4005chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
4006with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
4007
4008*** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
4009specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
4010specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
4011the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
4012coding systems that Emacs supports.
4013
4014*** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
4015lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
4016This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
4017After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
4018is used for *the immediately following command*.
4019
4020So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
4021write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
4022
4023If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
4024then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
4025
4026For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4027visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4028
4029*** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4030construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4031to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4032specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4033of the file.
4034
4035*** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4036the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4037code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4038translated into that character code.
4039
4040This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4041various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4042
4043By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4044
4045*** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4046the coding system for keyboard input.
4047
4048Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4049with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4050some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4051
4052By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4053
4054Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4055input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4056translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4057to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4058designed to work with terminals.
4059
4060*** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4061specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4062This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4063has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4064translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4065in the corresponding buffer.
4066
4067By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4068
4069*** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4070to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4071It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4072
4073*** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4074an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4075command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4076want to use.
4077
4078C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4079method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4080
4081*** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4082layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4083remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4084which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4085
4086*** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4087the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4088related information.
4089
4090*** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4091HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4092scripts.
4093
4094*** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4095information about the support for a particular language.
4096You specify the language as an argument.
4097
4098*** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4099the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4100first dash.
4101
4102A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4103(except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4104whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
41051 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4106
4107 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4108 B big5 (Chinese)
4109 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4110 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4111 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4112 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4113 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4114 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4115 K euc-korea (Korean)
4116 R koi8 (Russian)
4117 Q tibetan
4118 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4119 T lao
4120 T tis620 (Thai)
4121 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4122 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4123 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4124 v viqr (Vietnamese)
4125 z hz (Chinese)
4126
4127When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4128two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4129coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4130keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4131
4132*** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4133conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4134
4135When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4136into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4137rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4138Rmail files themselves.
4139
4140*** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4141conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4142
4143Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4144for sending mail:
4145
4146- If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4147- Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4148- Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4149 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4150- Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4151
4152*** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4153to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4154Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4155translations.
4156
4157** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4158of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4159insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4160without any conversion.
4161
4162** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4163You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4164RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4165any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4166
4167** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4168functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4169
4170Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4171Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4172
4173Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4174mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4175
4176** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4177complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4178in the buffer before point.
4179
4180With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4181symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4182you are using.
4183
4184With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4185just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4186
4187** File locking works with NFS now.
4188
4189The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4190in the same directory as FILENAME.
4191
4192This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4193works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4194can become a bottleneck.
4195
4196The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4197does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4198create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4199file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4200rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4201so useful that the change is worth while.
4202
4203When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4204are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4205collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4206tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4207
4208** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4209it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4210show-paren-mode.
4211
4212** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4213selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4214delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4215
4216** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4217within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4218complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4219
4220** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4221it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4222set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4223
4224** Changes in View mode.
4225
4226*** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4227Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4228
4229*** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4230view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4231
4232*** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4233previous state.
4234
4235*** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4236scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4237
4238*** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4239non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4240not just the selected window.
4241
4242*** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4243read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4244turns View mode on or off.
4245
4246*** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
4247how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
4248delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
4249
4250** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
4251now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
4252
4253** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
4254has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
4255presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
4256which version to compare with.
4257
4258** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
79214ddf 4259blocks if a match is inside the block.
a933dad1
DL
4260
4261The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
4262is outside the block. By customizing the variable
4263isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
4264shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
4265
4266By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
4267of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
4268blocks, all of them or none.
4269
4270** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
4271current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
4272confirmation first.
4273
4274** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
4275now changes the major mode according to that file name.
4276However, the mode will not be changed if
4277(1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
4278(2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
4279 not suitable for ordinary files, or
4280(3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
4281
4282This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
4283
4284However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
4285these commands do not change the major mode.
4286
4287** M-x occur changes.
4288
4289*** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
4290it performs a case-sensitive search.
4291
4292*** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
4293if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
4294using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
4295
4296** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
4297in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
4298window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
4299that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
4300buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
4301
4302** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
4303after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
4304appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
4305come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
4306
4307** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4308selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
4309buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
4310
4311** Outline mode changes.
4312
4313*** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
4314
4315*** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
4316
4317** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
4318you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
4319Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
4320was already active.
4321
4322The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
4323unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
4324get confused by it.
4325
4326If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
4327set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
4328
4329** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
4330
4331*** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4332conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
4333character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
4334including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
4335
4336The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
4337mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
4338copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
4339
4340*** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
4341are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
4342values.
4343
4344`dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
4345case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
4346`dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
4347case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
4348
4349** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
4350certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
4351can be. The default value is 30.
4352
4353** Changes in Mail mode.
4354
4355*** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
4356Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
4357composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
4358`mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
4359`sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
4360behavior.
4361
4362C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
4363compose-mail-other-frame.
4364
4365*** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
4366the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
4367replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
4368buffer that shows the original message.
4369
4370*** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
4371with separator lines around the contents.
4372
4373*** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
4374in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
4375definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
4376need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
4377
4378*** New features in the mail-complete command.
4379
4380**** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
4381for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
4382controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
4383Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
4384
4385**** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
4386to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
4387/etc/passwd.
4388
4389**** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
4390to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
4391/etc/passwd.
4392
4393** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
4394special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
4395directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
4396reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
4397
4398Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
4399when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
4400be taken to be magic.
4401
4402** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
4403files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
4404available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
4405
4406M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
4407(-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
4408
4409** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
4410suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
4411
4412In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
4413
4414new key dired.el binding old key
4415------- ---------------- -------
4416 * c dired-change-marks c
4417 * m dired-mark m
4418 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
4419 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
4420 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
4421 * u dired-unmark u
4422 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
4423 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
4424 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
4425 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
4426 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
4427 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
4428
4429** Rmail changes.
4430
4431*** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
4432saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
4433chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
4434each time you run it.
4435
4436*** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
4437whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
4438
4439*** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
4440messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
4441means to move in the opposite direction.
4442
4443*** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
4444you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
4445
4446*** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
4447just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
4448It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
4449can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
4450for output.
4451
4452** Gnus changes.
4453
4454*** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
4455
79214ddf
FP
4456*** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
4457Gnus.
a933dad1 4458
79214ddf 4459*** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
a933dad1
DL
4460`and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
4461
4462*** Article washing status can be displayed in the
4463article mode line.
4464
4465*** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
4466
4467*** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
4468
4469(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
4470
4471*** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
4472are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
4473`gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
4474
4475*** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
4476
4477*** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
4478
4479*** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
4480See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
4481
4482*** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
4483Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
4484used to pick articles.
4485
4486*** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
4487another have been added.
4488
4489 `M-x gnus-change-server'
4490
4491*** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
4492generating lines in buffers.
4493
4494*** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
4495`M-C-_'.
4496
4497*** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
4498
4499*** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
4500
4501 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
4502
4503*** Scores can be decayed.
79214ddf 4504
a933dad1
DL
4505 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
4506
4507*** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
4508Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
4509
4510*** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
4511the native server.
4512
4513 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
4514
4515*** A new command for reading collections of documents
4516(nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
4517
4518*** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
4519
4520*** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
4521even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
4522
4523*** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
4524(DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
4525
4526 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
4527 a group.
4528
4529*** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
4530sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
4531
4532 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
4533
4534*** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
4535
4536 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
4537
4538*** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
79214ddf 4539
a933dad1
DL
4540 Use the `Y c' command.
4541
4542*** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
4543
4544*** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
4545
4546 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
4547
4548*** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
4549from incoming mail before saving the mail.
79214ddf 4550
a933dad1
DL
4551 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
4552
4553*** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
4554
4555*** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
4556the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
4557
4558 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
4559
4560Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
4561and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
4562from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
4563hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
4564this issue.)
4565
4566Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
4567automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
4568particular news group. This can be done by:
4569
4570 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
4571
4572Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
4573of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
4574"XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
4575system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
4576for reading and posting).
4577
4578CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
4579 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
4580Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
4581newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
4582there.
4583
4584Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
4585default. Here are some of these default settings:
4586
4587 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
4588 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
4589 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
4590 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
4591 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
4592
4593When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
4594the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
4595
4596** CC mode changes.
4597
4598*** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
4599code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
4600values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
4601this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
4602Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
4603loaded.
4604
4605If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
79214ddf 4606Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
a933dad1 4607style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
79214ddf
FP
4608share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
4609c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
a933dad1
DL
4610must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
4611
4612*** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
4613of the current buffer.
4614
4615*** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
4616it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
4617of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
4618
4619*** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
4620style that the Python developers like.
4621
4622*** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
4623This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
4624just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
4625
4626** VC Changes [new]
4627
4628** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
4629name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
4630directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
4631
4632This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
4633master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
4634developers.
4635
4636You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
4637RET in a buffer visiting that file.
4638
4639*** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
4640other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
4641writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
4642calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
4643
4644*** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
4645version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
4646
4647** Calendar changes.
4648
4649A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
4650of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
4651for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
4652
4653** ps-print changes
4654
79214ddf 4655There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
a933dad1
DL
4656
4657*** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
4658
4659The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
4660formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
4661`a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
4662`ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
4663It defaults to `letter'.
4664If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
4665
4666The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
79214ddf 4667of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
a933dad1
DL
4668non-nil means "landscape" mode.
4669
4670The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
4671It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
79214ddf 4672It defaults to 1.
a933dad1
DL
4673
4674*** Horizontal layout
4675
4676The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
4677`ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
4678All are measured in points.
4679
4680*** Vertical layout
4681
4682The vertical layout is determined by the variables
4683`ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
4684All are measured in points.
4685
4686*** Headers
4687
4688If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
4689`ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
4690margin above the text.
4691
79214ddf 4692If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
a933dad1
DL
4693framing box is printed around the header.
4694
4695The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
4696`ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
4697
79214ddf
FP
4698The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
4699`ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
a933dad1
DL
4700`ps-header-font-size'.
4701
4702*** Font managing
4703
4704The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
4705used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
4706`ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
4707elements to this alist.
4708
79214ddf 4709The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
a933dad1
DL
4710for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
4711
4712** hideshow changes.
4713
4714*** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
79214ddf 4715C++, ; for lisp).
a933dad1
DL
4716
4717*** Support for java-mode added.
4718
4719*** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
4720in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
4721
4722*** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
4723the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
4724way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
4725
4726*** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
4727robust and a lot faster.
4728
79214ddf 4729*** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
a933dad1
DL
4730
4731*** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
4732to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
4733documentation for more details.
4734
4735** Changes in Enriched mode.
4736
4737*** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
4738filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
4739of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
4740use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
4741the next time unless the fill-column is different.
4742
4743*** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
4744distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
4745as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
4746as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
4747
4748** Font Lock mode
4749
4750*** Custom support
4751
4752The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
4753font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
4754faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
4755group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
4756your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
4757consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
4758
4759You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
4760
4761*** Maximum decoration
4762
4763Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
4764default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
4765of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
4766supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
4767to get the old behavior.
4768
4769*** New support
4770
4771Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
4772
4773Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
4774support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
4775
4776*** Configurable support
4777
4778Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
4779additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
4780c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
4781java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
4782list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
4783of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
4784convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
4785
4786Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
4787way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
4788it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
4789
4790*** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
4791
4792You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
4793highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
4794for any mode.
4795
4796For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
4797
4798 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
4799
4800in your ~/.emacs.
4801
4802*** New faces
4803
4804Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
4805font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
4806distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
4807to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
4808
4809*** Changes to fast-lock support mode
4810
4811The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
4812cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
4813same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
4814
4815*** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
4816
4817The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
4818according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
4819the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
4820non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
4821refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
4822the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
4823Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
4824
4825This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
4826For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
4827this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
4828refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
4829containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
4830the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
4831
4832As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
4833
4834Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
4835Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
4836Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
4837new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
4838
4839If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
4840settings.
4841
4842** Ada mode changes.
4843
4844*** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
4845If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
4846procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
4847you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
4848stubs.
4849
4850*** There are two new commands:
4851 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
4852 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
4853
4854The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
4855`ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
79214ddf 4856`ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
a933dad1
DL
4857
4858*** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
4859is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
4860Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
4861
4862*** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
4863formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
4864places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
4865space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
4866
4867** Scheme mode changes.
4868
4869*** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
4870mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
4871for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
4872with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
4873have any effect.
4874
4875If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
4876still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
4877scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
4878variables as buffer-local variables.
4879
4880*** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
4881Use M-x dsssl-mode.
4882
4883** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
4884it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
4885buffer in Emacs.
4886
4887** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
4888constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
4889(in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
4890
4891** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
4892which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
4893the current defun.
4894
4895** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
4896following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
4897
4898** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
4899and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
4900necessary).
4901
4902** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
4903if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
4904these register values no longer become completely useless.
4905If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
4906asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
4907it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
4908
4909** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
4910example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
4911be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
4912you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
4913
4914You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
4915variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
4916file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
4917revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
4918only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
4919
4920** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
4921since it applies only to the current frame.
4922
4923** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
4924file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
4925and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
4926
4927This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
4928multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
4929variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
4930tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
4931instead of just the file you are editing.
4932
4933** RefTeX mode
4934
4935RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
4936and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
4937different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
4938multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
4939turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
4940
79214ddf 4941C-c ( reftex-label
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4942 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
4943 knows which kind of label is needed.
4944
4945C-c ) reftex-reference
4946 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
4947 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
4948
4949C-c [ reftex-citation
4950 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
4951 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
4952
4953C-c & reftex-view-crossref
4954 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
4955
4956C-c = reftex-toc
4957 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
4958 can quickly jump to every section.
79214ddf 4959
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4960Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
4961commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
4962Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
4963reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
4964C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
4965
4966** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4967
4968*** Info documentation is now available.
4969
4970*** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
4971both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
4972
4973*** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
4974bibtex-user-optional-fields.
4975
4976*** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
4977(use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
4978
4979*** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
4980entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
4981appropriate functions.
4982
4983*** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
4984entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
4985
4986*** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
4987been cleaned.
4988
4989*** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
4990bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
4991
4992*** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
4993shall be delimited.
4994
4995*** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
4996bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
4997bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
4998
4999*** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
5000field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
5001prefixed with `ALT'.
5002
5003*** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
5004bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
5005formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
5006documentation).
5007
5008*** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
5009documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
5010for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
5011
5012*** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
5013comma should be inserted at end of last field.
5014
5015*** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
5016alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
5017signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
5018
5019*** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
5020
5021*** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
5022
5023*** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
5024from alien sources.
5025
5026*** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5027to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5028crossref entries.
5029
5030*** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5031region.
5032
5033*** Added support for imenu.
5034
5035*** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5036of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5037`compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5038`next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5039
5040*** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5041from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5042
5043** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5044
5045** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5046functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5047Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5048as an argument.
5049
5050When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5051and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5052
5053** browse-url changes
5054
5055*** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5056Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5057(browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5058non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5059customization variables.
5060
5061*** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5062
5063*** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5064lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5065(e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5066
5067** Changes in Ediff
5068
5069*** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5070pops up the Info file for this command.
5071
5072*** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5073the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5074merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
5075directories).
5076
5077*** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
5078and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
5079files in the same directory.
5080
5081*** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
5082The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5083related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5084
5085** Changes in Viper
5086
5087*** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
79214ddf 5088*** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
a933dad1
DL
5089 instead of vip-.
5090*** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
79214ddf 5091*** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
a933dad1
DL
5092Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5093*** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5094*** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5095*** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5096color when Viper is in insert state.
5097*** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5098Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5099viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5100
5101** Etags changes.
5102
5103*** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5104default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5105Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5106variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5107not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5108
5109*** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5110
5111*** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5112constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5113
5114*** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5115recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5116In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5117
5118*** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5119C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5120recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5121methods and protocols.
5122
5123*** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5124.cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5125column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5126paragraph name.
5127
5128*** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5129an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5130at least M times and as many as N times.
5131
5132** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5133in files has changed slightly.
5134
5135With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5136time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5137This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5138with old time-stamp-format values.
5139
5140In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5141(`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5142This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5143reasons.
5144
5145In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5146natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5147fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5148(`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5149time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5150specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5151
5152Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5153case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5154truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5155
5156The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5157being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5158future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5159recommended now will continue to work then.
5160
5161See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5162details.
5163
5164** There are some additional major modes:
5165
5166dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5167m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5168meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5169
5170** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5171copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5172into Emacs.
5173
5174** New Lisp packages include:
5175
5176*** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5177
5178*** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5179be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5180
5181*** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5182
5183*** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5184in shell buffers.
5185
5186*** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5187See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5188and `elint-defun'.
5189
5190*** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5191meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5192ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5193strings or comments.
5194
5195These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5196abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5197you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5198insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5199at these points.
5200
5201*** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5202can visit them by short forms of their names.
5203
5204*** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5205Emacs Lisp function at point.
5206
5207*** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5208
5209*** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5210switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5211
5212*** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5213
5214*** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5215
5216*** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5217
5218*** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5219from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5220
5221*** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5222You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5223inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5224original place after inserting the copy.
5225
5226*** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5227on the buffer.
5228
5229You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5230velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5231(with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5232
5233Enable mouse-drag with:
5234 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
5235-or-
5236 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
5237
5238*** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
5239mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
5240
5241*** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
5242It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
5243
5244*** ogonek
5245
5246The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
5247Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
5248platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
5249TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
5250ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
5251prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
5252instance) and vice versa.
5253
5254To use this package load it using
5255 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
5256Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
79214ddf 5257 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
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DL
5258 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
5259The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
5260ways of customization in `.emacs'.
5261
5262*** Interface to ph.
5263
5264Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
5265
5266The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
5267services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
5268these servers.
5269
5270*** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
5271
5272*** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
5273You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
5274while the real cursor does not move.
5275
5276*** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
5277for visiting your favorite web sites.
5278
5279*** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
5280so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
5281
5282** movemail change
5283
5284Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
5285mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
5286supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
5287user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
5288
5289This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
5290\f
5291* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
5292
5293** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
5294
5295Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
5296end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
5297Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
5298file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
5299file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
5300
5301To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
5302C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
5303coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
5304specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
5305LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
5306save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
5307\f
5308* Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
5309
5310** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
5311Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
5312vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
5313Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
5314
5315** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
5316to start with w32- instead of win32-.
5317
5318In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
5319don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
5320"win".
5321
5322** Basic Lisp changes
5323
5324*** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
5325evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
5326
5327*** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
5328be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
5329or by the user.
5330
5331The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
5332
5333*** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
5334
5335(when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
5336(unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
5337
5338*** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
5339usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
5340its argument.
5341
5342*** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
5343
5344*** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
5345
5346*** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
5347
5348*** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
5349error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
5350include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
5351`format' function.
5352
5353*** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
5354or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
5355whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
5356
5357*** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
5358either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
5359adding one of these suffixes.
5360
5361*** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
5362which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
79214ddf 5363If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
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5364
5365We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
5366because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
5367
5368*** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
5369
5370*** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
5371You must load the `cl' library to define it.
5372
5373*** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
5374conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
5375
5376 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
5377
5378BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
5379BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
5380
5381*** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
5382choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
5383restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
5384works using `save-current-buffer'.
5385
5386*** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
5387write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
5388of the last form.
5389
5390*** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
5391which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
5392last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
5393as the last form.
5394
5395*** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
5396characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
5397matches.
5398
5399For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
5400
5401*** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
5402with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
5403Then it returns that string.
5404
5405For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
5406
5407(with-output-to-string
5408 (princ "The buffer is ")
5409 (princ (buffer-name)))
5410
5411returns "The buffer is foo".
5412
5413** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
5414is non-nil.
5415
5416These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
5417buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
5418characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
5419
5420*** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
5421a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
5422
5423Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
5424character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
5425Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
5426position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
5427characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
5428 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
5429
5430ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
5431Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
5432non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
5433characters".
5434
5435The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
5436through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
5437"leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
5438range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
5439leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
5440
5441*** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
5442(forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
5443multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
5444character, which may be more than one buffer position.
5445
5446This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
5447always one buffer position, need to be changed.
5448
5449However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
79214ddf 5450
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DL
5451*** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
5452because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
5453have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
5454the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
5455guaranteed.
5456
5457*** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
5458between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
5459character).
5460
5461When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
5462
5463 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
5464 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
5465 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
5466 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
5467 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
5468
5469*** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
5470
5471*** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
5472`length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
5473more than the number of characters.
5474
5475You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
5476it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
5477\xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
5478is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
5479follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
5480newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
5481
5482*** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
5483and returns a string containing those characters.
5484
5485*** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
5486(sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
5487counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
5488character, sref signals an error.
5489
5490*** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
5491in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
5492string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5493
5494*** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
5495in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
5496region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5497
5498*** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
5499the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
5500to a vector of the characters in it.
5501
5502*** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
5503of a string. You call it as follows:
5504
5505 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
5506
5507This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
5508STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
5509This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
5510Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
5511it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
5512
5513*** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
5514if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5515
5516*** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
5517if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5518
5519*** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
5520to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
5521not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
5522which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
5523
5524(truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
5525
5526This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
5527
5528The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
5529If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
5530are not included in the resulting value.
5531
5532The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
5533at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
5534WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
5535is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
5536
5537If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
5538place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
5539character extends across that column), then the padding character
5540PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
5541string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
5542column START-COLUMN.
5543
5544*** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
5545the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
5546necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
5547difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
5548changed text, before the change.
5549
5550*** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
5551sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
5552one character set for each script, not for each language.
5553
5554**** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
5555
5556**** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
5557
5558**** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
5559set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
5560
5561**** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
5562name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
5563which identify the character within that character set.
5564
5565**** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
5566byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
5567opposite of split-char.
5568
5569**** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
5570of all the characters between BEG and END.
5571
5572**** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
5573of all the characters in a string.
5574
5575*** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
5576and specifying coding systems.
5577
5578**** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
5579system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
5580of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
5581(Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
5582and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
5583as what to do about code conversion.)
5584
5585**** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
5586name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
5587
5588**** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5589for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5590except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
5591
5592Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5593which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
5594to match against a file name.
5595
5596VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5597a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5598decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5599to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5600systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5601specifies the coding system for encoding.
5602
5603If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5604or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5605
5606**** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
5607the coding system to use for network sockets.
5608
5609Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5610which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
5611either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
5612service names.
5613
5614VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5615a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5616decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5617to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5618systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5619specifies the coding system for encoding.
5620
5621If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5622or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5623
5624**** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5625for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5626except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
5627start the subprocess.
5628
5629**** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
5630systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
5631when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
5632(OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
5633to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
5634
5635**** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
5636coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
5637subprocess.
5638
5639It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
5640but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
5641start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
5642connection permanently or until overridden.
5643
5644The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
5645file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
5646network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
5647coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
5648It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
5649system for one operation at a time.
5650
5651**** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
5652files, subprocesses or network connections.
5653
5654**** The function process-coding-system tells you what
5655coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
5656The value is a cons cell,
5657 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
5658where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
5659the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
5660input to the subprocess.
5661
5662**** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
5663change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
5664
5665** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
5666customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
5667you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
5668
5669You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
5670variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
5671information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
5672legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
5673customization.
5674
5675Thus, instead of writing
5676
5677 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
5678 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
5679
5680you would now write this:
5681
5682 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
5683 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
5684 :type 'boolean
5685 :group foo)
5686
5687The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
5688two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
5689describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
5690for a description of them.
5691
5692The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
5693should belong to. You define a new group like this:
5694
5695 (defgroup ispell nil
5696 "Spell checking using Ispell."
5697 :group 'processes)
5698
5699The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
5700group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
5701but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
5702to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
5703second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
5704
5705Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
5706package should have just one group; a more complex package should
5707have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
5708package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
5709first-level subgroups.
5710
5711** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
5712
5713This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
5714separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
5715
5716** easy-mmode
5717
5718The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
5719developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
5720only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
5721predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
5722`easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
5723`easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
5724
5725** Text property changes
5726
5727*** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
5728text property.
5729
5730*** The new functions next-char-property-change and
5731previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
5732place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
5733functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
5734starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
5735
5736If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
5737LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
5738of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
5739position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
5740
5741*** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
5742value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
5743is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
5744
5745** Changes in invisibility features
5746
5747*** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
5748hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
5749is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
5750should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
5751would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
5752make the overlay visible.
5753
5754During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
5755invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
5756needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
5757which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
5758the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
5759t when it should hide it.
5760
5761*** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
5762
5763Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
79214ddf
FP
5764invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
5765and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
a933dad1 5766Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
79214ddf 5767manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
a933dad1
DL
5768Here is an example of how to do this:
5769
5770 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
79214ddf 5771 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
a933dad1 5772 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
79214ddf 5773 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
a933dad1
DL
5774
5775 ...
5776 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
5777
5778 ...
5779 ;; When done with the overlays:
5780 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5781 ;; Or respectively:
5782 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5783
5784** Changes in syntax parsing.
5785
5786*** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
5787`parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
5788obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
5789`parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
5790
5791If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
5792is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
5793used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
5794
5795When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
5796character in the buffer is calculated thus:
5797
5798 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
5799 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
5800
5801 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
5802 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
5803 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
5804
5805 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
5806 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
5807 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
5808 determine the syntax type of the character.
5809
5810 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
5811 of the current buffer.
5812
5813*** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
5814value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
5815for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
5816
5817*** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
5818and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
5819only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
5820character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
5821another character with the same code (unless quoted).
5822
5823These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
5824text property.
5825
5826*** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
5827arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
5828of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
5829
5830*** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
5831(and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
5832element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
5833nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
5834string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
5835
5836*** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
5837syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
5838`font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
5839
5840** Changes in face features
5841
5842*** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
5843if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
5844
5845*** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
5846of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
5847
5848*** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
5849set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
5850
5851*** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
5852set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
5853
5854*** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
5855by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
5856and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
5857the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
5858overlay property).
5859
5860This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
5861arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
5862
5863** Changes in file-handling functions
5864
5865*** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
5866directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
5867they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
5868is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
5869
5870This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
5871begins with ~.
5872
5873*** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
5874it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
5875
5876*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
5877the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
5878
5879*** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
5880as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
5881
5882*** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
5883character code conversion as well as other things.
5884
5885Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
5886(formerly it did not).
5887
5888*** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
5889environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
5890
5891*** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
5892instead of constant strings.
5893
5894*** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
5895to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
5896any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
5897
5898substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
5899in the same way as before.
5900
5901*** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
5902The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
5903which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
5904
5905*** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
5906error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
5907else, and returns nil.
5908
5909*** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
5910directory cannot be listed.
5911
5912** Changes in minibuffer input
5913
5914*** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
5915read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
5916additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
5917argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
5918ways:
5919
5920 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
5921 It is available through the history command M-n.
5922
5923*** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
5924read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
5925argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
5926minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
5927enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
5928
5929In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
5930argument in this way.
5931
5932*** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
5933from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
5934minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
5935
5936** Echo area features
5937
5938*** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
5939echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
5940minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
5941after the echo area is cleared.
5942
5943*** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
5944in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
5945
5946** Keyboard input features
5947
5948*** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
5949set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
5950
5951*** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
5952received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
5953by keyboard macros.
5954
5955** Frame-related changes
5956
5957*** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
5958creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
5959hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
5960
5961*** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
5962the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
5963has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
5964
5965*** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5966selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
5967value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
5968in the selected frame.
5969
5970*** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
5971is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
5972which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
5973
5974** X Windows features
5975
5976*** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
5977x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
5978x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
5979
5980*** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
5981The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
5982
5983*** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
5984MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
5985A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
5986
5987If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
5988it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
5989
5990** Subprocess features
5991
5992*** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
5993functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
5994automatically.
5995
5996*** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
5997and returns the output from the command as a string.
5998
5999*** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
6000and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
6001
6002** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
6003does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
6004
6005** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
6006at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
6007goes after the other menu items.
6008
6009** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
79214ddf 6010of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
a933dad1
DL
6011around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
6012are in use.
6013
6014The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
6015series of several changes--if that seems safe.
6016
6017Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
6018after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
6019form.
6020
6021** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
6022is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
6023but its hook is still run.
6024
6025** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6026for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6027
6028If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6029regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6030useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6031
6032This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6033are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6034filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6035warned.
6036
6037** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6038way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6039
6040** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6041integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6042functions like display-time.
6043
6044** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6045name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6046
6047** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6048can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6049is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6050
6051** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6052if there is an error in compilation.
6053
6054** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6055switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6056argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6057they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6058
6059** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6060Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6061the *scratch* buffer.
6062
6063** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6064The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6065where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6066e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6067
6068** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6069and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6070It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6071
6072** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6073using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6074variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
6075and compose-mail-other-frame.
6076
6077** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
6078can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
6079full name of the specified user will be returned.
6080
6081** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
6082of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6083where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6084in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6085option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6086files at all.
6087
6088** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6089and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6090width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6091the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6092
6093For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6094minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6095with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6096is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6097
6098** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6099
6100** imenu.el changes.
6101
6102You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
79214ddf 6103item from menu created by imenu.
a933dad1
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6104
6105An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6106#include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6107select one of those items.
6108\f
6109* Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6110\f
6111* Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6112
6113** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6114mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6115
6116** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6117use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6118Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6119\f
6120* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6121
6122** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6123To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6124
6125** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6126conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6127matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6128expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6129word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6130all caps.
6131
6132** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6133at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6134
6135When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6136does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6137as in previous Emacs versions.
6138
6139** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6140non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6141time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6142frames.
6143
6144** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6145if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6146This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6147Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6148accident.
6149
6150** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6151keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6152It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6153line and then executing the macro.
6154
6155This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6156
6157** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6158(something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6159characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6160characters.
6161
6162** Font Lock mode
6163
6164*** Font Lock support modes
6165
6166Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6167below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6168hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6169to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6170Font Lock mode is enabled.
6171
6172For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6173
6174 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6175
6176in your ~/.emacs.
6177
6178*** lazy-lock
6179
6180The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6181only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6182becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6183Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6184occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6185buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6186Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6187
6188To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6189
6190 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6191
6192To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6193
6194** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6195
6196*** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6197paren and key.
6198
6199*** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6200supported.
6201
6202** Gnus changes.
6203
6204Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6205commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6206significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6207previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6208
6209Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6210between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6211
79214ddf 6212*** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
a933dad1
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6213variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6214obsolete.
6215
6216*** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6217missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6218
6219 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6220
6221*** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6222
6223 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6224
6225*** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
79214ddf 6226referred.
a933dad1
DL
6227
6228*** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6229
6230 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6231
6232*** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
6233
6234 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
6235
6236*** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
79214ddf 6237buffers.
a933dad1
DL
6238
6239 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
6240
6241*** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
6242
6243 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
6244
6245*** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
6246
6247 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
6248
6249*** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
6250
6251 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
6252
6253*** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
6254is possible.
6255
6256 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
6257
6258*** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
6259groups of groups.
6260
6261*** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
6262
6263*** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
79214ddf 6264batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
a933dad1
DL
6265
6266*** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
6267
6268*** The Gnus cache is much faster.
6269
6270*** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
6271
6272 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
6273
6274*** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
6275expiration times.
6276
6277*** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
6278
6279*** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
6280process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
6281
6282*** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
6283articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
6284bound to keys on the `/' submap.
6285
6286*** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
6287articles with the `*' command.
6288
6289*** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
6290
6291*** Article headers can be buttonized.
6292
6293 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
6294
6295*** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
6296
79214ddf 6297*** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
a933dad1
DL
6298`nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
6299
6300*** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
79214ddf 6301buffer.
a933dad1
DL
6302
6303*** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
6304
6305*** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
6306
6307*** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
6308
6309 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
6310
79214ddf 6311*** Groups can be made permanently visible.
a933dad1
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6312
6313 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
6314
79214ddf 6315*** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
a933dad1
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6316
6317*** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
6318
79214ddf 6319*** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
a933dad1 6320
79214ddf 6321 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
a933dad1
DL
6322 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
6323
6324*** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
79214ddf 6325refetching.
a933dad1
DL
6326
6327 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
6328
6329*** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
6330buffer to allow easier treatment.
6331
6332*** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
6333
6334*** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
6335
6336 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
6337
6338*** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
79214ddf 6339articles.
a933dad1
DL
6340
6341 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
6342
79214ddf 6343*** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
a933dad1
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6344
6345*** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
6346cited text to hide is now customizable.
6347
6348 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
6349
6350*** Boring headers can be hidden.
6351
6352 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
6353
6354*** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
6355
6356*** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
6357
6358The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
6359in greater detail.
6360\f
6361* Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
6362
6363** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
6364second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
6365asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
6366exists.
6367
6368** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
6369as well as lists.
6370
6371** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
6372of a given keymap.
6373
6374** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
6375given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
6376keymap or nil.
6377
6378** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
6379an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
6380name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
6381menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
6382equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
6383alias.
6384\f
6385* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
6386
6387** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
6388
6389Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
6390This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
6391was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
6392far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
6393pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
6394
6395For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
6396you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
6397`http://www.vtw.org/'.
6398
6399** A note about C mode indentation customization.
6400
6401The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
6402do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
6403It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
6404much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
6405chapter of the manual for details.
6406
6407However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
6408customization variables take effect.
6409
6410** Marking with the mouse.
6411
6412When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
6413highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
6414using M-x transient-mark-mode.
6415
6416** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
6417
6418*** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
6419
6420*** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
6421to work on NT only and not on 95.)
6422
6423*** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
6424in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
6425you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
6426application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
6427applications, these problems are significant.
6428
6429If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
6430likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
6431However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
6432will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
6433other DOS application as a subprocess.
6434
6435Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
6436You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
6437
6438If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
6439subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
6440have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
6441Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
6442separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
6443Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
6444
6445** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
6446
6447This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
6448which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
6449minibuffer contains.
6450
6451** `title' frame parameter and resource.
6452
6453The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
6454It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
6455It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
6456affects just the displayed title of the frame.
6457
6458The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
6459it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
6460and also serves as the default for the displayed title
6461when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
6462
6463** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
6464enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
6465
6466** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
6467F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
6468Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
6469
6470If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
6471menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
6472something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
6473the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
6474
6475 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
6476
6477** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
6478to replace the characters it "deletes".
6479
6480** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
6481
6482** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
6483a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
6484select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
6485It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
6486immediately after the selected one.
6487
6488This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
6489made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
6490
6491** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
6492
6493Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
6494directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
6495If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
6496Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
6497recover-session.
6498
6499You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
6500auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
6501will not work.
6502
6503Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
6504normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
6505this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
6506bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
6507now that the bug is fixed.
6508
6509** Changes to Version Control (VC)
6510
6511There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
6512when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
6513Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
6514which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
6515
6516If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
6517telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
6518VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
6519the link is visited and a warning displayed.
6520
6521** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
6522Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
6523is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
6524
6525There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
6526Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
6527enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
6528The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
6529remain normal.
6530
6531** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
6532header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
6533
6534Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
6535known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
6536offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
6537Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
6538
6539Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
6540of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
6541a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
6542name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
6543documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
6544`mail-directory-stream'.)
6545
6546** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
6547skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
6548characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
6549with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
6550
6551Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
6552- to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
6553wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
6554
6555The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
6556less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
6557headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
6558Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
6559Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
6560fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
6561to a limitation in font-lock).
6562
6563External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
6564
6565** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
6566buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
6567buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
6568this example:
6569
6570 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
6571 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
6572
6573** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6574
6575*** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
6576
6577*** Font Lock mode is now supported.
6578
6579*** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
6580
6581*** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
6582entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
6583will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
6584isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
6585(bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
6586The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
6587
6588*** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
6589does the same job.
6590
6591*** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
6592"Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
6593
6594*** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
6595text.
6596
6597** Font Lock mode
6598
6599*** Global Font Lock mode
6600
6601Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
6602new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
6603font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
6604turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
6605on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
6606
6607For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
6608
6609 (global-font-lock-mode t)
6610
6611in your ~/.emacs.
6612
6613*** Local Refontification
6614
6615In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
6616However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
6617those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
6618command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
6619
6620In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
6621(The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
6622current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
6623above and below point.
6624
6625With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
6626
6627** Follow mode
6628
6629Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
6630buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
6631side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
6632they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
6633split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
6634follow-mode.
6635
6636M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
6637
6638To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
6639command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
6640
6641** hide-show changes.
6642
6643The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
6644to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
6645normal hooks.
6646
6647** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
6648The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
6649
6650** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
6651recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
6652those that begin a function, record, or macro.
6653
6654** MSDOS Changes
6655
6656*** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
6657Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
6658
6659*** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
6660and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
6661
6662*** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
6663
6664*** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
6665pressing both mouse buttons.
6666
6667*** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
6668restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
79214ddf 6669are:
a933dad1
DL
6670
6671**** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
6672now works.
6673
6674**** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
6675
6676**** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
6677implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
6678
6679**** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
6680
6681**** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
6682
6683**** `M-x recover-session' works.
6684
6685**** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
6686
6687**** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
6688\f
6689* Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
6690
6691** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
6692tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
6693remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
6694this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
6695behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
6696
6697** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
6698
6699The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
6700not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
6701need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
6702be different.
6703
6704It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
6705than `system-type'.
6706
6707See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
6708
6709** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
6710now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
6711
6712** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
6713that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
6714
6715** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
6716no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
6717reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
6718
6719The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
6720to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
6721like this:
6722
6723 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6724
6725SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
6726It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
6727becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
6728
6729REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
6730seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
6731means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
6732
6733*** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
6734up if too much time passes.
6735
6736 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
6737
6738This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
6739If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
6740of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
6741form in BODY.
6742
6743*** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
6744a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
6745call looks like this:
6746
6747 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6748
6749SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
6750runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
6751timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
6752ARGS.
6753
6754Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
6755command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
6756command.
6757
6758REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
6759time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
6760does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
6761each time Emacs becomes idle.
6762
6763If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
6764idle for SECS seconds.
6765
6766*** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
6767all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
6768programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
6769instead.
6770
6771*** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
6772there is no answer within a certain time.
6773
6774 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
6775
6776asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
6777within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
6778Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
6779
6780** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
6781arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
6782meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
6783arguments in between are ignored.
6784
6785This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
6786the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
6787
6788** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
6789/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
6790/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
6791site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
6792version.
6793
6794It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
6795version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
6796for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
6797has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
6798and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
6799problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
6800
6801** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
6802.abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
6803systems with limited file name syntax.
6804
6805Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
6806convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
6807for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
6808completions.el:
6809
6810(defvar save-completions-file-name
6811 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
6812 "*The filename to save completions to.")
6813
6814This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
6815depends on the operating system, because the definition of
6816convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
6817Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
6818MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
6819
6820** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
6821rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
6822minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
6823
6824** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
6825marker from its buffer position.
6826
6827** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
6828Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
6829The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
6830
6831** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
6832that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
6833condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
6834of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
6835matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
6836regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
6837
6838This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
6839errors that happen often during editing.
6840
6841** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
6842into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
6843puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
6844
6845** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
6846now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
6847
6848** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
6849a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
6850name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
6851to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
6852and not get-buffer-window.
6853
6854** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
6855calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
6856being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
6857
6858If you use this feature, you should set the variable
6859buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
6860property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
6861non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
6862are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
6863property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
6864over and over for the same text.
6865
6866** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
6867
6868*** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
6869in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
6870
6871;; @(#) HEADER: text
6872;; $HEADER: text $
6873
6874in addition to the normal
6875
6876;; HEADER: text
6877
6878*** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
6879checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
6880lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
6881\f
6882* For older news, see the file ONEWS.
6883
6884----------------------------------------------------------------------
6885Copyright information:
6886
6887Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6888
6889 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
6890 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
6891 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
6892 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
6893
6894 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
6895 of this document, or of portions of it,
6896 under the above conditions, provided also that they
6897 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
6898\f
6899Local variables:
6900mode: outline
6901paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
6902end: