(reset_buffer): Initialize buffer's cursor_type.
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / NEWS
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1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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3See the end for copying conditions.
4
5Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8\f
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9* Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
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11** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
13
14** There are new configure options associated with the support for
15images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option to list them.
16\f
17* Changes in Emacs 21.1
18
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19** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
20compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
21this behavior.
22
23The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
24compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
25Emacs dump core.
26
27** New X resources recognized
100b3cbb 28
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29*** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
30whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
31is useful for debugging X problems.
32
33Example:
34
699238d9 35 emacs.synchronous: true
7233c5bd 36
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37*** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
38visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
39the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
40and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
41visual class names are
42
43 TrueColor
44 PseudoColor
45 DirectColor
46 StaticColor
47 GrayScale
48 StaticGray
49
50Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
51`pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
52meaning.
53
54The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
55supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
56`visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
57visual.
58
59Example:
60
699238d9 61 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
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62
63*** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
64specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
65default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
66resource values are `true' or `on'.
67
68Example:
69
699238d9 70 emacs.privateColormap: true
100b3cbb 71
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72** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
73more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
74now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
75
42088c12 76** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
c60ea02e 77display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
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78shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
79be customized.
c60ea02e 80
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81** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
82
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83** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
84all frames except the selected one.
85
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86** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
87to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
88
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89** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
90the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X either in the echo
91area or with tooltips.
92
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93** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
94read mail from the menu etc.
95
96** Changes in Outline mode.
97
98There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
99`outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
100the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
101
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102** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
103groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
104
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105** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
106or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
107several other special buffers.
108
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109** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
110under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
111.emacs file.
112
113The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
114determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
115
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116** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
117abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
118`directory-abbrev-alist'.
119
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120** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
121is running in batch mode. For example,
122
123 (message "%s" (read t))
124
125will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
126to standard output.
127
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128** Faces and frame parameters.
129
130There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
131Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
132`scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
133`scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
134sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
135for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
136parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
137
138Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
139`default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
79214ddf 140`foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
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141`default' face and vice versa.
142
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143** New face `menu'.
144
145The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
146Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
147attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
148
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149** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
150
151The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
152colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
153correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
154the screen gamma of a frame's display.
155
156PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
157in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
158color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
159
160The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
161`ScreenGamma'.
162
163** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
164
165The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
166Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
167oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
168of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
169the text.
170
171** Emacs has a new face implementation.
172
173The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
174font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
175height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
176These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
177specify a font.
178
179Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
180These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
181under Lisp changes, below.
182
183** New default font is Courier 12pt.
184
185** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
186its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
187it is hollow.
188
189** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
190truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
191foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
192customizing face `fringe'.
193
194** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
195can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
196
197** LessTif support.
198
199Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
200need a version 0.88.1 or later.
201
202** Toolkit scroll bars.
203
204Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
205LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
206configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
207bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
208bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
209Emacs.
210
211When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
212Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
213Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
214Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
215define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
216`s/freebsd.h' as an example.
217
218Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
219a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
220directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
221different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
222system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
223add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
224
225The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
226`float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
227This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
228image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
229Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
230
231** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
232
233When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
234widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
235Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
236
237** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
238
239When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
240whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
241defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
242highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
243displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
244whitespace.
245
246** Busy-cursor.
247
248Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
249display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
250
251** Blinking cursor
252
253M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
254terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
255and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
256the group `cursor'.
257
258** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
259
260This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
261generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
262See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
263details.
264
265Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
266have to do anything to activate it.
267
268** Tabs and variable-width text.
269
270Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
271defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
272independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
273Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
274
275** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
276
277*** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
278
279 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
280
281The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
282one.
283
284*** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
285Motif.
286
287** Hscrolling in C code.
288
289Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
290
291** Tool bar support.
292
293Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
294how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
295
296** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
297
298Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
299mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
300line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
301about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
302in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
303
304Currently, the following actions have been defined:
305
306- Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
307buffers.
308
309- Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
310M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
311
312- Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
313
559cee90 314- Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
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315toggles the read-only status.
316
317- Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
318
319** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
320
321When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
e33b0397 322from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
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323non-nil.
324
325** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
326
327Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
328Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
329the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
330italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
331Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
332attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
333
334** Sound support
335
336Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
337(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
338Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
339(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
340to enable sound support.
341
342** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
343the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
344forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
345value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
346users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
347even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
348
349The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
350
351** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
352
353As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
354drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
355`x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
356
357** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
358bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
359
360This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
361`indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
362variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
363
364** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
365
366When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
367value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
368number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
369fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
370
371When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
372value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
373number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
374fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
375
376** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
377notably at the end of lines.
378
379All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
380spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
381
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382There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
383
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384** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
385query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
386after each match to get the replacement text.
387
388** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
389
390If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
391longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
392on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
393by setting the following variable:
394
395- User option: max-mini-window-height
396
397Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
398fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
399specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
400
401Default is 0.25.
402
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403** Changes to hideshow.el
404
405Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
406selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
407
408*** Generalized block selection and traversal
409
410A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
411(both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
412which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
413`forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
414point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
415(which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
416
417If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
418i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
419backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
420the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
421
422*** Isearch support for updating mode line
423
424During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
425blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
426line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
427portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
428is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
429
430To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
431something like this in your .emacs.
432
433 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
434 (lambda ()
435 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
436
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437** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
438
439If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
440entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
441log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
442
443New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
444buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
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445
446Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
447if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
448
449The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
450expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
451cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
452a file.
453
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454** Changes in Font Lock
455
456*** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
457font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
458mode.
459
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460** Comint (subshell) changes
461
462Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
463and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
464
465The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
466buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
467buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
468
469The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
470M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
471the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
472
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473** Changes to Rmail mode
474
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475*** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
476to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
477Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
478with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
479for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
480
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481*** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
482like `j'.
483
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484*** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
485specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
2d5e9b54 486digest message.
e26cec67 487
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488** Changes to TeX mode
489
490The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
491`latex-mode'.
492
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493** Changes to RefTeX mode
494
495*** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
496 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
497 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
498 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
499 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
500 can be edited from that buffer.
501
502*** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
503 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
504 `A' to use all marked entries).
505
506*** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
507 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
508
509*** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
510 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
511 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
512 been cited.
513
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514** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
515The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
516semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
517in column 1 are always made leaves.
518
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519** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
520has the following new features:
521
522*** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
523may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
524to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
525time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
526
527*** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
528feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
529file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
530compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
531pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
532defaults to 1.
533
534** Tooltips.
535
536Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
537mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
538can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
539
540Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
541variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
542the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
543tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
544
545** Customize changes
546
547*** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
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548`State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
549cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
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550
551*** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
552Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
553default).
554
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555*** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
556between custom options. Example:
557
558 (defcustom default-input-method nil
559 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
560 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
561 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
562 :group 'mule
563 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
564 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
565
566This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
567current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
568first in a custom-set-variables statement.
569
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570** New features in evaluation commands
571
572The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
573modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
574print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
575customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
576eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
577
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578** Dired changes
579
580*** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
581command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
582is, delete only empty directories.
583
584*** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
585command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
586copy directories recursively.
587
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588*** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
589in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
590the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
591
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592** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
593use the -f option when sending mail.
594
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595** CC mode changes.
596
597Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
598current user setups (although it's believed that these
599incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
600However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
601back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
602compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
603release.
604
605*** New initialization procedure for the style system.
606When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
607variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
608take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
609is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
610settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
611possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
612Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
613
614By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
615special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
616the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
617of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
618above.
619
620Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
621when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
622function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
623call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
624then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
625values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
626only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
627function documentation for more info.
628
629The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
630especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
631with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
632intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
633such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
634is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
635configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
636global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
637
638(Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
639
640**** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
641This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
642
643This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
644variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
645completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
646the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
647empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
648style system.
649
650**** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
651In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
652c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
653as far as possible.
654
655*** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
656CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
657surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
658chapter about this in the manual.
659
660**** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
661The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
662recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
663primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
664adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
665
666**** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
667This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
668c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
669
670**** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
671This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
672
673It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
674Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
675A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
676inside CC Mode.
677
678Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
679causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
680the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
681available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
682cc-mode/).
683
684**** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
685The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
686specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
687literals.
688
689**** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
690It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
691prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
692you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
693this function.
694
695*** Fixes to IDL mode.
696It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
697to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
698struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
699Thanks to Eric Eide.
700
701*** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
702It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
703opening braces hangs and when they don't.
704
705**** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
706
707*** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
708See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
709better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
710and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
711
712*** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
713previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
714the column specified by comment-column.
715
716*** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
717In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
718is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
719prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
720contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
721don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
722
723*** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
724instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
725arguments.
726
727*** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
728
729*** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
730c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
731c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
732variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
733Provan).
734
735*** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
736
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GM
737** Isearch changes
738
739*** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
a933dad1
DL
740selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
741
87be76f6
GM
742*** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
743
d35fce81 744Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
87be76f6
GM
745`isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
746search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
747before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
748highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
749`secondary-selection'.
750
751The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
752will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
753Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
754using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
755usual snappy response.
756
757If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
758matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
759set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
760isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
761
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762** Changes in sort.el
763
764The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
12c25bdc 765as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
35384f06
GM
766new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
767numeric base.
87be76f6 768
d7b511c4
GM
769** Changes to Ange-ftp
770
771*** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
d67f47e4
DL
772names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
773sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
774
d7b511c4
GM
775*** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
776ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
777
4b9347b3
GM
778** Shell script mode changes.
779
780Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
781derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
782sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
783
79214ddf
FP
784** Etags changes.
785
786*** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
787
aca0be23 788*** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
8dc78b52
FP
789possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
790{lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
791This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
792a regular expression. The manual contains details.
aca0be23 793
79214ddf
FP
794*** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
795declarations when given the --declarations option.
796
797*** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
aca0be23 798"operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
79214ddf
FP
799
800*** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
801types.
802
803*** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
804
805*** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
806
807*** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
808are now tagged.
809
810*** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
811variables are tagged.
812
813*** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
814
8dc78b52
FP
815*** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
816for PSWrap.
79214ddf 817
f6737cde
GM
818** Changes in etags.el
819
3f6e4b8b
GM
820*** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
821tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
822is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
823
f6737cde
GM
824*** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
825the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
826
827If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
828FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
829TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
830obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
831
832TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
833
834FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
835List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
836
837A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
838
839 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
840 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
841 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
842
843*** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
844of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
845
846*** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
847names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
848
fbc164de
PE
849** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
850and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
851LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
852
59c1bf85
DL
853** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
854These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
855(Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
856currently no specific input method support for them.
857
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DL
858** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sqeuence-nos' to
859remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
860appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
861
862** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
863
6f8ea2ae
DL
864** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
865
a933dad1
DL
866** New modes and packages
867
5e5dff44
GM
868*** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
869authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
870
871The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
872the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
873the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
874Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
875even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
876single step.
877
878On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
879matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
880probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
881contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
882
f7136ee8
GM
883*** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
884unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
885actually modifying content of a buffer.
886
bbd9b566
GM
887*** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
888PostScript.
889
890Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
891
892The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
893
894 ; comment (until end of line)
895 A non-terminal
896 "C" terminal
897 ?C? special
898 $A default non-terminal
899 $"C" default terminal
900 $?C? default special
901 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
902 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
903 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
904 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
905 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
906 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
907 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
908 C+ one or more occurrences of C
909 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
910 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
911 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
912 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
913 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
914 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
915 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
916
917Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
918
99453a38
GM
919*** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
920align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
921determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
922example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
923equal signs of assignments.
924
559cee90
DL
925*** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
926paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
927
6448a6b3
GM
928*** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
929list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
930buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
931customize the package.
932
249652b1
GM
933*** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
934replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
935is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
936and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
937not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
938which answers different needs.
939
3476b54a
GM
940*** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
941suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
942expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
943course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
944reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
945to be enabled.
946
8964fec7
SM
947*** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
948containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
949
a933dad1
DL
950*** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
951
952*** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
953
954*** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
955
956*** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
957Pascal) language.
958
959*** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
960the text at point.
961
962*** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
963
8d54eb69
DL
964*** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
965
a933dad1
DL
966*** whitespace.el ???
967
ebcfda83
GM
968*** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
969files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
970(very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
971interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
972often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
973uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
974codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
975
976*** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
977
978Here is an example of columns:
979
980horse apple bus
981dog pineapple car EXTRA
982porcupine strawberry airplane
983
984Doing the following settings:
985
986 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
987 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
988 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
989 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
990
991
992Selecting the lines above and typing:
993
994 M-x delimit-columns-region
995
996It results:
997
998[ horse , apple , bus , ]
999[ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1000[ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1001
1002delim-col has the following options:
1003
1004 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1005 before all columns.
1006
1007 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1008 between each column.
1009
1010 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1011 after all columns.
1012
1013 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1014 each column.
1015
1016delim-col has the following commands:
1017
1018 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1019 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1020
f507826c
GM
1021*** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1022were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
1023is displayed in the "Files" menu.
1024
1025The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
1026
1027To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
1028
1029To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
1030M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
1031
1032To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
1033M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
1034
8062f458
DL
1035*** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1036text.
1037
36e24b82 1038*** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
91735437
DL
1039of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1040specific to Message mode.
1041
36e24b82
DL
1042*** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1043viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1044with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1045
aaa659ef
DL
1046*** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1047interface to access directory servers using different directory
1048protocols. It has a separate manual.
1049
eee54b0e
DL
1050*** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1051for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1052
aaa659ef
DL
1053*** windmove.el
1054
a933dad1
DL
1055** Withdrawn packages
1056
1057*** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1058functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
25a81338 1059
3261c1d8
DL
1060*** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1061
1062*** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
a933dad1
DL
1063\f
1064* Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1065
1066Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1067--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1068When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1069so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1070
9a0dd3dc
GM
1071** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1072an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1073defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1074set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1075
d7b511c4
GM
1076** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1077specificationa in string form as accepted my `modify-syntax-entry' to
1078the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1079text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1080
1081Example:
1082
1083 (string-to-syntax "()")
1084 => (4 . 41)
1085
1fa28578
GM
1086** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1087other than 10.
1088
1089*** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1090INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1091
1092 #b1111
1093 => 15
1094 #b-1111
1095 => -15
1096
1097*** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1098
1099 #o666
1100 => 438
1101
1102*** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1103
1104 #xbeef
1105 => 48815
1106
1107*** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1108
1109 #2R-111
1110 => -7
1111 #25rah
1112 => 267
1113
e9b4e5ff
GM
1114** The function documentation-property now evaluates the value of
1115the given property to obtain a a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1116and isn't a string.
1117
16ce590d
DL
1118+++
1119** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1120
73825616 1121** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
16ce590d
DL
1122for a regexp in a string.
1123
1124** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1125`mouse-position-function'.
1126
723e779c
GM
1127** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1128that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1129
d1e103b2
GM
1130** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1131Keywords are now always considered constants.
1132
31047e0d
DL
1133+++
1134** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1135returns it.
1136
7a85e4df
GM
1137** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1138returned by function `recent-keys'.
1139
02b14400
RS
1140+++
1141** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1142can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1143Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1144etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1145mode.
404fa7d6 1146
02b14400 1147+++
8964fec7
SM
1148** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1149and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1150
02b14400
RS
1151+++
1152** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1153has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1154function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1155returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1156been performed."
1157
1158When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1159and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1160hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1161then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
ef961722 1162
02b14400 1163+++
81da8b32
GM
1164** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1165In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1166and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1167
02b14400 1168+++
9e207b90
GM
1169** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1170with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1171specified table.
1172
1173 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1174
1175Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
03d9c64c
GM
1176TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1177saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1178what BODY returns.
9e207b90 1179
02b14400 1180+++
d7f89643 1181** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
95cd4c40 1182Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
8964fec7 1183
02b14400 1184+++
dde9e75a
GM
1185** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1186removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1187
02b14400 1188+++
9da30515
GM
1189** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1190instead of being optional.
1191
02b14400 1192+++
d20679eb
GM
1193** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1194modify read-only text.
1195
02b14400 1196+++
fbc164de
PE
1197** New functions and variables for locales.
1198
1199The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1200decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
b718982a
PE
1201time functions like strftime. The new variables
1202`system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1203locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
fbc164de
PE
1204
1205The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1206environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1207the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
b718982a
PE
1208environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1209not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1210`locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1211`locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
fbc164de 1212
02b14400 1213+++
863476d1
SM
1214** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1215To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1216modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1217start sequences.
1218
02b14400 1219+++
ef6d912c
GM
1220** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1221because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1222
02b14400 1223+++
a933dad1
DL
1224** New function `propertize'
1225
1226The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1227strings with text properties.
1228
1229- Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1230
1231Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1232by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1233PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1234specified value of that property. Example:
1235
1236 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1237
1238+++
1239** push and pop macros.
1240
02b14400
RS
1241Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1242are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
a933dad1
DL
1243as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1244
1245(push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1246(pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1247 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1248
02b14400
RS
1249** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1250
6c7fd5aa
RS
1251Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1252are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
02b14400
RS
1253
1254(dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1255 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1256 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1257 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1258
1259(dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1260 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1261 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1262 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1263
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DL
1264+++
1265** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1266as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1267
1268[:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1269[:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1270[:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1271[:blank:] matches space and tab only
1272[:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1273 space, and DEL.
1274[:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1275 and DEL.
1276[:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1277 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1278 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1279[:alpha:] matches letters.
1280 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1281 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1282[:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1283[:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1284[:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1285[:punct:] matches punctuation.
1286 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1287 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1288[:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1289[:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1290[:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1291
1292+++
1293** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1294
1295The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1296
1297- Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1298
1299The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1300are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1301
1302:test TEST
1303
1304TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1305Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1306it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1307
1308:size SIZE
1309
1310SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1311many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1312
1313:rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1314
1315REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1316full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1317size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
13181.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1319old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1320
1321:rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1322
1323THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1324hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1325(size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1326
1327:weakness WEAK
1328
1329WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
1330Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
1331their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
1332hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1333
1334- Function: makehash &optional TEST
1335
1336Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1337
1338- Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1339
1340Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1341
1342- Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1343
1344Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1345values are shared.
1346
1347- Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1348
1349Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1350
1351- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1352
1353Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1354
1355- Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1356
1357Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1358
1359- Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1360
1361Returns the size of TABLE.
1362
1363- Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1364
1365Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1366
1367- Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1368
1369Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1370
1371- Function: clrhash TABLE
1372
1373Clear TABLE.
1374
1375- Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1376
1377Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1378not found.
1379
79214ddf 1380- Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
a933dad1
DL
1381
1382Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1383another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1384
1385- Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1386
1387Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1388
1389- Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1390
1391Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1392arguments KEY and VALUE.
1393
1394- Function: sxhash OBJ
1395
1396Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1397
1398- Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1399
1400Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1401a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
79214ddf 1402comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
a933dad1
DL
1403and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1404of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1405
1406TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1407
1408HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1409code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1410integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1411
1412Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1413be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1414
1415 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1416 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1417
1418 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1419 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1420
79214ddf 1421 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
a933dad1
DL
1422 'case-fold-string-hash))
1423
1424 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1425
1426+++
1427** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1428
1429It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1430circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1431a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1432
1433+++
1434** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1435
1436If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1437#N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1438
a933dad1
DL
1439+++
1440** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
1441t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
1442specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
1443is too short to reach that column.
1444
1445+++
1446** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
1447now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
1448after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
1449two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
1450
1451If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
1452perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
1453and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
1454
1455+++
1456** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
1457to specify which buffer to return the size of.
1458
1459+++
1460** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
1461calendar-move-hook after moving point.
1462
1463+++
1464** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
1465directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
1466small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
1467small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
1468temporary-file-directory instead.
1469
1470+++
1471** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
1472the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
1473`before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
1474hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
1475
1476+++
1477** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
1478elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
1479
1480+++
1481** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
1482
1483make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
1484creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
1485ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
1486
1487+++
1488** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
1489
1490The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
1491on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
1492is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
1493never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
1494ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
1495overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
1496
1497If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
1498that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
1499to get an error if the file exists at that time.
1500The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
1501
1502+++
1503** Function `format' now handles text properties.
1504
1505Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
1506If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
1507ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
1508result string.
1509
1510Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
1511string where arguments appear in the result string.
1512
1513Example:
1514
1515 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
1516 (s2 "world"))
1517 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
1518 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
b246b1f6 1519 (format s1 s2))
a933dad1
DL
1520
1521results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
1522
1523+++
1524** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
1525
1526Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
1527The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
1528argument in it.
1529
1530 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
1531 (arg "world"))
1532 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
1533 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
1534 (message msg arg))
1535
1536+++
1537** Sound support
1538
1539Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
1540(Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
1541
1542Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
1543(*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
1544to enable sound support.
1545
1546Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
1547list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
1548when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
1549functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
1550sound to play, before playing the sound.
1551
1552The following sound properties are supported:
1553
1554- `:file FILE'
1555
1556FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
1557searched relative to `data-directory'.
1558
6fb40beb
GM
1559- `:data DATA'
1560
1561DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
1562may be present, but not both.
1563
a933dad1
DL
1564- `:volume VOLUME'
1565
1566VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
15670..1. This property is optional.
1568
1569Other properties are ignored.
1570
1571** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
356673d4
DL
1572
1573** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
1574a keyword symbol.
fc91dc2d
GM
1575
1576** Changes to garbage collection
1577
1578*** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
1579of live and free strings.
1580
1581*** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
1582strings that have been consed so far.
1583
a933dad1
DL
1584\f
1585* New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
1586
1587Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1588--- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1589When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1590so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1591
1592** New face implementation.
1593
1594Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
1595font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
1596
1597+++
1598*** New faces.
1599
1600Each face can specify the following display attributes:
1601
1602 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
79214ddf 1603
a933dad1
DL
1604 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
1605 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
79214ddf 1606
a933dad1 1607 3. Font height in 1/10pt
79214ddf 1608
a933dad1 1609 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
79214ddf 1610
a933dad1 1611 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
79214ddf 1612
a933dad1 1613 6. Foreground color.
79214ddf 1614
a933dad1
DL
1615 7. Background color.
1616
1617 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
1618
1619 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
1620
1621 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
1622
1623 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
1624
1625 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
1626 color.
1627
1628 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
1629 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
1630
1631Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
1632same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
1633frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
1634faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
1635with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
1636attributes mentioned above.
1637
1638There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
1639definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
1640created frames.
79214ddf 1641
a933dad1
DL
1642A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
1643have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
1644`fully-specified'.
1645
1646+++
1647*** Face merging.
1648
1649The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
1650combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
1651aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
1652properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
1653that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
1654results in a fully-specified face.
1655
1656+++
1657*** Face realization.
1658
1659After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
1660merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
1661realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
1662available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
1663face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
1664cache of the frame on which it was realized.
1665
1666Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
1667character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
1668for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
1669charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
1670
1671Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
1672specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
1673being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
1674the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
1675statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
1676
1677In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
1678`char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
16790x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
1680the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
1681initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
1682Emacs.
1683
1684Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
1685`enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
1686registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
1687with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
1688
1689++++
1690**** Clearing face caches.
1691
1692The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
1693on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
1694unused fonts.
1695
1696+++
1697*** Font selection.
79214ddf 1698
a933dad1
DL
1699Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
1700given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
1701for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
1702
1703If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1704pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1705family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1706property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1707an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1708
1709Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1710against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1711match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1712
1713Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1714
1715The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1716attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1717face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1718names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1719that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1720width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1721to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1722
1723Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1724specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1725face doesn't exist.
1726
1727+++
1728**** Scalable fonts
1729
1730Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1731since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1732servers.
1733
1734To enable scalable font use, set the variable
b246b1f6 1735`scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
a933dad1
DL
1736scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1737Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1738scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1739that list. Example:
1740
1741 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1742
1743allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1744
1745+++
1746*** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1747
1748- Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1749
1750Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1751is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1752string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1753
1754If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1755the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1756FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1757POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1758SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1759These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1760if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1761REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1762the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1763of the face font sort order.
1764
79214ddf 1765- Function: x-font-family-list
a933dad1
DL
1766
1767Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1768omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1769(FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1770non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1771
1772- Variable: font-list-limit
1773
1774Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1775won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1776matching font. The default is currently 100.
1777
1778+++
1779*** Setting face attributes.
1780
1781For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1782with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1783implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1784`face-attribute'.
1785
1786Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1787symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1788
1789The following attributes are recognized:
1790
1791`:family'
1792
1793VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1794or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1795and `?' are allowed.
1796
1797`:width'
1798
1799VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1800It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1801`condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1802`extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1803
1804`:height'
1805
1806VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
18071/10 pt.
1808
1809`:weight'
1810
1811VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1812symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1813`semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1814
1815`:slant'
1816
1817VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1818symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1819`reverse-oblique'.
1820
1821`:foreground', `:background'
1822
1823VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1824
1825`:underline'
1826
1827VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1828VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1829a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1830don't underline.
1831
1832`:overline'
1833
1834VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1835VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1836string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1837overline.
1838
1839`:strike-through'
1840
1841VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1842striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1843face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1844is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1845
1846`:box'
1847
1848VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1849around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1850VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1851of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1852and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1853VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1854:color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1855the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1856specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1857defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1858the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1859color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1860should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1861like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1862that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1863the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1864box.
1865
1866`:inverse-video'
1867
1868VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1869inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1870
1871`:stipple'
1872
1873If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1874The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1875searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1876HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1877is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1878explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1879
1880For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1881and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1882
1883`:font'
1884
1885Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1886XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1887is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1888versions of Emacs.
1889
1890For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1891be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1892must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1893
1894Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1895`defface'.
1896
1897*** Face attributes and X resources
1898
1899The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1900from X resources:
1901
1902 Face attribute X resource class
1903-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1904 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1905 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1906 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1907 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1908 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1909 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1910 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1911 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1912 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1913 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1914 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1915 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1916 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
79214ddf 1917 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
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1918 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1919 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1920 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1921 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1922 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1923
1924+++
1925*** Text property `face'.
1926
1927The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1928specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1929specification can be
1930
19311. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1932
19332. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1934 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1935 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1936 for face attribute names.
1937
19383. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1939 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1940 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1941
1942+++
1943** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1944
acf3ecb7
EZ
1945The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
1946on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
1947the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
a933dad1 1948default. You can get defined colors with a call to
acf3ecb7 1949`defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
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1950used to clear the mapping table.
1951
acf3ecb7
EZ
1952** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
1953
1954The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
1955and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
1956type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
1957color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
1958display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
1959old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
1960`x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
1961compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
1962should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
1963modify their color-related behavior.
1964
1965The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
1966any frame type.
1967
8a5719f0
EZ
1968** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
1969
1970The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
1971`display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
1972`display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
1973`display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
1974`display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
1975`display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
1976display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
1977the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
1978platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
1979
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1980+++
1981** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
a933dad1 1982
463cac2d 1983This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
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DL
1984
1985The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1986end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1987Otherwise, it returns zero.
1988
463cac2d
GM
1989** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
1990
1991There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
1992buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
1993text-property.
1994
9a9dfda8 1995Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
463cac2d 1996forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
9a9dfda8 1997to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
463cac2d 1998not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
fc7ac24f
GM
1999commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2000boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2001`inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2002functions.
463cac2d
GM
2003
2004Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
9a9dfda8 2005a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
463cac2d 2006editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
a933dad1 2007
9a9dfda8
GM
2008The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2009
2010- Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
2011
2012Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2013A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2014If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2015constrained position if that is is different.
2016
2017If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2018positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2019ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2020constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
2021as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2022is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2023fields.
2024
2025If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2026NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2027unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2028C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2029only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2030
2031- Function: erase-field &optional POS
2032
2033Erases the field surrounding POS.
2034A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2035If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2036
2037- Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2038
2039Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2040A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2041If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2042If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
2043field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2044
2045- Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2046
2047Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2048A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2049If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2050If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
2051then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2052
2053- Function: field-string &optional POS
2054
2055Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2056A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2057If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2058
2059- Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2060
2061Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2062A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2063If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2064
a933dad1
DL
2065+++
2066** Image support.
2067
2068Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2069strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2070(AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2071replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2072
2073If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2074`(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2075AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2076window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2077area.
2078
2079IMAGE is an image specification.
2080
2081*** Image specifications
2082
2083Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2084is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2085specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
35a5514b
GM
2086symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2087described below are ignored.
a933dad1
DL
2088
2089The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2090
2091`:ascent ASCENT'
2092
2093ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
2094of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
2095
2096`:margin MARGIN'
2097
79214ddf 2098MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
a933dad1
DL
2099margin around the image. Default is 0.
2100
2101`:relief RELIEF'
2102
2103RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2104around an image.
2105
2106`:algorithm ALGO'
2107
2108Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2109be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2110supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2111which is intended to display images "disabled."
2112
2113`:heuristic-mask BG'
2114
2115If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2116background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2117determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2118corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2119the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2120be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2121background of the image.
2122
2123`:file FILE'
2124
2125Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2126search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2127building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2128may be present in the image specification.
2129
518df5c4
GM
2130`:data DATA'
2131
2132Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2133supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2134present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2135support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2136
a933dad1
DL
2137*** Supported image types
2138
b246b1f6 2139**** XBM, image type `xbm'.
a933dad1
DL
2140
2141XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2142properties supported are
2143
2144`:foreground FG'
2145
2146FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2147is the frame's foreground.
2148
2149`:background FG'
2150
2151BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2152the frame's background color.
2153
2154XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2155case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2156instead of a `:file' property.
2157
2158`:width WIDTH'
2159
2160WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2161
2162`:height HEIGHT'
2163
2164HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2165
2166`:data DATA'
2167
2168DATA must be either
2169
2170 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2171 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2172
2173 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2174
2175 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2176 bitmap.
2177
2178**** XPM, image type `xpm'
2179
2180XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2181`xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2182found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2183`--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2184
2185Additional image properties supported are:
2186
2187`:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2188
2189SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2190name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2191name.
2192
2193XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2194add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2195
a933dad1
DL
2196The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2197to display compressed images.
2198
2199**** PBM, image type `pbm'
2200
2201PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2202mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2203defined.
2204
2205**** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2206
2207Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
3bd37feb
GM
2208package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2209are:
2210
a933dad1
DL
2211**** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2212
2213Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2214package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2215properties defined.
2216
2217**** GIF, image type `gif'
2218
2219Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2220`libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2221
2222Additional image properties supported are:
2223
2224`:index INDEX'
2225
2226INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2227multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2228
2229This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2230For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2231at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2232every 0.1 seconds.
2233
2234(defun show-anim (file max)
2235 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2236 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2237
2238(defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2239 (when (= idx max)
2240 (setq idx 0))
518df5c4 2241 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
a933dad1
DL
2242 (save-excursion
2243 (set-buffer buffer)
2244 (goto-char (point-min))
2245 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2246 (insert-image img "x"))
2247 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2248
2249**** PNG, image type `png'
2250
2251Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2252package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2253properties defined.
2254
2255**** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2256
2257Additional image properties supported are:
2258
2259`:pt-width WIDTH'
2260
2261WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
b246b1f6 2262integer. This is a required property.
a933dad1
DL
2263
2264`:pt-height HEIGHT'
2265
2266HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
b246b1f6 2267must be a integer. This is an required property.
a933dad1
DL
2268
2269`:bounding-box BOX'
2270
2271BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2272the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2273files. This is an required property.
2274
2275Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2276lisp/gs.el.
2277
2278*** Lisp interface.
2279
79214ddf
FP
2280The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2281which are supported in the current configuration.
a933dad1
DL
2282
2283Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2284they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2285The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2286manually.
2287
2288*** Simplified image API, image.el
2289
2290The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2291creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2292can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2293define an image based on available image types. The functions
2294`put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2295buffer.
2296
2297+++
2298** Display margins.
2299
2300Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2301and images.
2302
2303To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2304`left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2305`set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2306obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2307`right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2308the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2309of the display margins.
2310
2311You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2312containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2313one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2314string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2315in this file).
2316
2317+++
2318** Help display
2319
2320Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2321moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2322`help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2323that have a `help-echo' property.
2324
2325The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
2326items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
2327If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
2328evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
2329tool-bar item is used.
2330
2331The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
2332help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
2333help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
2334
2335+++
2336** Vertical fractional scrolling.
2337
2338The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
2339This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
2340
2341The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
2342scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
2343The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
2344scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
2345used.
2346
79214ddf
FP
2347 (global-set-key [A-down]
2348 #'(lambda ()
a933dad1 2349 (interactive)
79214ddf 2350 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1 2351 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
79214ddf 2352 (global-set-key [A-up]
a933dad1
DL
2353 #'(lambda ()
2354 (interactive)
79214ddf 2355 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
a933dad1
DL
2356 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
2357
2358+++
2359** New hook `fontification-functions'.
2360
2361Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
2362when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
2363variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
2364is called with one argument, POS.
2365
2366At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
2367characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
2368as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
2369property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
2370`fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
2371
2372+++
2373** Tool bar support.
2374
2375Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
2376parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
2377controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
2378suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
2379`auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
2380automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
2381
2382*** Tool bar item definitions
2383
2384Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
2385`tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
2386where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
79214ddf 2387
a933dad1
DL
2388CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
2389evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
2390the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
2391property (see below).
79214ddf 2392
a933dad1
DL
2393BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
2394binding are currently ignored.
2395
2396The following properties are recognized:
2397
2398`:enable FORM'.
79214ddf 2399
a933dad1
DL
2400FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
2401or disabled.
79214ddf 2402
a933dad1 2403`:visible FORM'
79214ddf 2404
a933dad1 2405FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
79214ddf 2406
a933dad1
DL
2407`:filter FUNCTION'
2408
2409FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
2410FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
2411used instead of BINDING to display this item.
79214ddf 2412
a933dad1
DL
2413`:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
2414
2415TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
2416and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
79214ddf 2417
a933dad1
DL
2418`:image IMAGES'
2419
2420IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
2421image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
2422meaning of each of the four elements:
2423
2424 Index Use when item is
2425 ----------------------------------------
2426 0 enabled and selected
2427 1 enabled and deselected
2428 2 disabled and selected
2429 3 disabled and deselected
79214ddf 2430
a933dad1 2431`:help HELP-STRING'.
79214ddf 2432
a933dad1
DL
2433Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
2434is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
2435
2436*** Tool-bar-related variables.
2437
2438If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
2439resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
2440than 1/4 of the frame's size.
2441
79214ddf 2442If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
a933dad1
DL
2443raised when the mouse moves over them.
2444
2445You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
2446`tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
2447pixels. Default is 1.
2448
2449You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
2450`tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
2451
2452*** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
2453
2454You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
79214ddf 2455a tool bar item. If
a933dad1
DL
2456
2457 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
2458 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
2459 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
2460
2461is the original tool bar item definition, then
2462
2463 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
2464
2465makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
2466item.
2467
2468** Mode line changes.
2469
2470+++
2471*** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
2472
2473The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
2474that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
2475a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
2476
24771. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
2478a `local-map' text property.
2479
24802. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
2481that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
2482
24833. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
2484is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
2485`local-map' property.
2486
2487The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
2488properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
2489example.
2490
54522c9f
GM
2491*** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
2492evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
2493
a933dad1
DL
2494+++
2495*** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
2496variable mode-line-format to nil.
2497
2498+++
2499*** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
2500
2501This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
2502`header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
2503completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
2504`default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
2505line.
2506
2507The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
2508`header-line'.
2509
2510The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
2511position in the header-line.
2512
2513+++
2514** Text property `display'
2515
2516The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
2517also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
2518`display' property should be a display specification, as described
2519below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
2520
2521*** Variable width and height spaces
2522
2523To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
2524specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
2525`(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
2526area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
2527marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
2528displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
2529simpler form STRETCH as property value.
2530
2531The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
2532PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
2533properties described below.
2534
2535The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
2536characters having the `display' property.
2537
2538- :width WIDTH
2539
2540Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
2541character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
2542
2543- :relative-width FACTOR
2544
2545Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
2546first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
2547same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
2548width of that character by FACTOR.
2549
2550- :align-to HPOS
2551
2552Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
2553value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
2554
2555Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
2556
2557- :height HEIGHT
2558
2559Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
2560normal line height.
2561
2562- :relative-height FACTOR
2563
2564The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
2565of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
2566
2567- :ascent ASCENT
2568
2569Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
2570used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
2571baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
2572equal to 100.
2573
2574You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
2575
2576*** Images
2577
2578A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
2579. IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
2580in the display, the characters having this display specification in
2581their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
2582the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
2583`(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
2584area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
2585the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
2586as display specification.
2587
2588*** Other display properties
2589
2590- :space-width FACTOR
2591
2592Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
2593should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
2594integer or float.
2595
2596- :height HEIGHT
2597
2598Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
2599
2600If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
2601means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
2602the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
2603``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
2604a font is available counts as a step.
2605
2606If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
2607as tall as the frame's default font.
2608
2609If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
2610height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
2611
2612Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
2613`height' bound to the current specified font height.
2614
2615- :raise FACTOR
2616
2617FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
2618font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
2619raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
2620amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
2621`:height' subproperty.
2622
2623*** Conditional display properties
2624
2625All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
2626has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
2627applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
2628During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
2629the text having the `display' property.
2630
2631The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
2632`(:when t SPEC)'.
2633
2634+++
2635** New menu separator types.
2636
2637Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
2638item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
2639treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
2640to specify other menu separator types.
2641
2642- `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
2643
2644No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
2645separator occurs.
2646
2647- `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
2648
2649A single line in the menu's foreground color.
2650
2651- `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
2652
2653A double line in the menu's foreground color.
2654
2655- `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
2656
2657A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2658
2659- `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
2660
2661A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2662
2663- `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
2664
2665A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
2666displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
2667
2668- `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
2669
2670A single line with 3D raised appearance.
2671
2672- `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
2673
2674A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
2675
2676- `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
2677
2678A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
2679
2680- `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
2681
2682Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2683
2684- `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
2685
2686Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
2687
2688- `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
2689
2690Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2691
2692- `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
2693
2694Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
2695
2696Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
2697the corresponding single-line separators.
2698
2699+++
2700** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
2701
2702The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
2703`scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
2704Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
2705that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
2706default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
2707default background is the background color of the frame, and the
2708default foreground is black.
2709
2710The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
2711(class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
2712`ScrollBarBackground').
2713
2714Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
2715settings for scroll bar colors.
2716
2717+++
2718** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
2719display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
2720
2721---
2722** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
2723starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
2724on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
2725line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
2726the original window start.
2727
2728---
2729** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
2730`hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
2731now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
2732
2733+++
2734** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
2735
2736A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
2737`window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
2738windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
2739other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
2740
2741The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
2742fixed-width and fixed-height.
2743
2744 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
2745
2746A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
2747fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
2748window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
2749change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
2750temporarily to nil, for example
2751
2752 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
2753 (enlarge-window 10))
2754
79214ddf 2755Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
a933dad1 2756or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
e411ce4b
EZ
2757
2758** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
2759terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
2760to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
2761overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
2762horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
2763support a vertical-bar cursor).
e33b0397
DL
2764^L
2765* Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
2766
2767** Not new, but not mentioned before:
2768M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
a933dad1
DL
2769\f
2770* Changes in Emacs 20.4
2771
2772** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
2773
2774You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
2775Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
2776`.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
2777
2778If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
2779is the one that is used.
2780
2781** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
2782the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
2783Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
2784separate from the command's regular output.
2785Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
2786says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
2787In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
2788the buffer name.
2789
2790When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
2791output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
2792it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
2793cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
2794
2795** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
2796the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
2797is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
2798created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
2799
2800** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
2801example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
2802match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
2803quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
2804
2805** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
2806now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
2807if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
2808they never ignore case.
2809
2810** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
2811under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
2812applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
2813of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
2814just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
2815convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
2816part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
2817
2818If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
2819the same format that was used in the file before.
2820
2821You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
2822`inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
2823
2824** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
2825renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
2826This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
2827
2828** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
2829The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
2830buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2831your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2832is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2833end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2834Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2835
2836The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2837eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2838control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2839format. You can now customize these variables.
2840
2841** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2842filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2843filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2844enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2845
2846** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2847in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2848windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2849
2850** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2851dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2852doesn't have any effect.
2853
2854** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2855not one per buffer.
2856
2857** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2858use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2859 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2860
2861** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2862To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2863`auto-show-mode' command.
2864
2865** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2866avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2867versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2868choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2869occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2870
2871** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2872cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2873
2874** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2875character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2876feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2877
2878** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2879the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2880interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2881and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2882
2883** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2884
2885The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2886that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2887one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2888codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2889set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2890
2891Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2892from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2893
2894IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2895equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2896a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2897`?' on other systems.
2898
2899IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2900feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2901Unix.
2902
2903Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2904current codepage when it starts.
2905
2906** Mail changes
2907
feab4fba
GM
2908*** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
2909`mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
2910appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
2911non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
2912MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
2913headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
2914latin-1:
2915
2916 MIME-version: 1.0
2917 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
2918 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
2919
a933dad1
DL
2920*** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2921default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2922default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2923sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2924buffer-file-coding-system.
2925
2926You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2927sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2928mail.
2929
2930*** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2931if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2932Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2933list of possible coding systems.
2934
2935** CC Mode changes
2936
2937*** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2938modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2939longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2940docstring for details.
2941
2942*** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2943symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2944found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2945prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2946lineup functions use this feature currently.
2947
2948*** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2949"finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2950
2951*** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2952"catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2953
2954*** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2955from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2956symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2957c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2958anonymous classes.
2959
2960*** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2961syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2962
2963*** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2964inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2965support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2966function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2967
2968*** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2969(i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2970brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2971c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2972(brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2973
2974*** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2975
2976*** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2977
2978*** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2979for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2980
2981*** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2982
2983*** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2984associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2985This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2986circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2987class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2988
2989** Gnus changes.
2990
2991*** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2992added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2993Gnus manual for the full story.
2994
2995*** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2996before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2997group, which is created automatically.
2998
2999*** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3000values.
3001
3002*** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3003
3004*** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3005outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3006
3007*** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3008`C-u C-c C-c'.
3009
3010*** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3011
3012*** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3013re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3014
3015*** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3016
3017*** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3018Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3019
3020*** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3021`a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3022
3023*** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3024control over simplification.
3025
3026*** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3027
3028*** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3029limit.
3030
3031*** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3032
3033*** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3034
79214ddf 3035*** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
a933dad1
DL
3036If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3037rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3038
3039*** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3040`a' forces normal posting method.
3041
3042*** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3043-- `W d'.
3044
3045*** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3046to a non-nil value.
3047
3048*** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3049where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3050
3051*** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3052has been added.
3053
3054*** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3055
3056*** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3057
3058*** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3059`gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3060
3061*** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3062`message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3063
3064*** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3065
3066*** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3067been added.
3068
3069*** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3070`gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3071
3072*** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3073updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3074
3075*** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3076
3077*** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3078
3079*** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3080
3081** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3082
3083*** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3084options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3085nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3086
3087*** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3088TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3089of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3090TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3091can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3092
3093*** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3094All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3095but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3096the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3097
3098*** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3099the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3100buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3101mismatch.
3102
3103** Changes to RefTeX mode
3104
3105*** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3106file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3107
3108*** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3109lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3110characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3111removed from the label.
3112
3113*** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3114a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3115
3116*** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3117customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3118
3119*** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3120`reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
79214ddf 3121expressions.
a933dad1
DL
3122
3123*** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3124
3125** New/deleted modes and packages
3126
3127*** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3128SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3129
3130*** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3131editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3132SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3133
3134*** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3135changes with a special face.
3136
3137*** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3138this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3139Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3140\f
3141* MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3142
3143** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3144This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3145conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3146and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3147check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3148
3149The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3150Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3151distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3152
3153** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3154MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3155controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3156directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3157Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3158on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3159string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3160program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3161printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3162
3163** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3164output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3165available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3166input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3167temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3168program.
3169
3170An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3171and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3172programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3173automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3174as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3175ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3176
3177** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3178a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3179MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3180was not documented clearly before.
3181
3182** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3183This includes Tetris and Snake.
3184\f
3185* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3186
3187** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3188return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3189They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3190meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3191
3192** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3193WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3194and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3195
3196** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3197
3198*** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3199It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3200
3201*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3202the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3203integers.
3204
3205** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3206files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3207arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3208file names and attributes are returned.
3209
3210** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3211sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3212accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3213It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3214returns the result.
3215
3216** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3217to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3218
3219** New functions for base64 conversion:
3220
3221The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3222into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3223performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3224optionally.
3225
3226Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3227job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3228
3229**
3230The new function process-running-child-p
3231will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3232terminal to its own child process.
3233
3234** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3235when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3236to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3237itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3238
3239** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3240be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3241
3242** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3243:included is an alias for :visible.
3244
3245easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3246easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3247to move or copy menu entries.
3248
3249** Multibyte editing changes
3250
3251*** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3252an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3253make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3254work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3255char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3256 (setq char (sref str idx)
3257 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3258The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3259
3260If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3261(say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3262 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3263
3264*** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3265region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3266deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3267
3268 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3269
3270This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3271across the boundary.
3272
3273*** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3274`unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3275 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3276 contains 8-bit characters.
3277 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3278 contains invalid characters.
3279
3280*** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3281text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3282preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3283text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3284way.
3285
3286*** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3287If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3288end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3289prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3290
3291*** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3292compose Thai characters in a string.
3293
3294** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3295argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3296for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
3297menus should always use the third argument.
3298
3299** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
3300read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
3301arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
3302input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
3303
3304** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
3305of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
3306programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
3307inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
3308
3309** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
3310the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
3311returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
3312echo area contents.
3313
3314 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
3315
3316** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
3317NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
3318requested feature cannot be loaded.
3319
3320** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
3321foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
79214ddf 3322means to clear out that attribute.
a933dad1
DL
3323
3324** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
3325gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
3326
3327** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
3328read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
3329unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
3330end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
3331
3332** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
3333the gap of the current buffer.
3334
3335** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
3336to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
3337current buffer.
3338
3339** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
3340facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
3341These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
3342it back in after any modifications have been made.
3343\f
3344* Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
3345
3346** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
3347the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
3348/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
3349directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
3350subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
3351
3352Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
3353names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
3354Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
3355which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
3356these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
3357
3358Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
3359starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
3360time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
3361
3362This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
3363Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
3364to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
3365subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
3366`.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
3367results.
3368
3369** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
3370GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
3371that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
3372fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
3373\f
3374* Changes in Emacs 20.3
3375
3376** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
3377including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
3378it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
3379perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
3380
3381** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
3382specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
3383region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
3384further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
3385command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
3386within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
3387are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
3388region.
3389
3390In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
3391selective undo.
3392
3393** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
3394unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
3395buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
3396effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
3397Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
3398
3399The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
3400though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
3401-*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
3402load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
3403
3404** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
3405no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
3406enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
3407something that most users not do.
3408
3409** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
3410operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
3411The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
3412applications.
3413
3414C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
3415pasting operations.
3416
3417** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
3418setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
3419like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
3420printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
3421`ps-printer-name'.
3422
3423** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
3424minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
3425any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
3426except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
3427incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
3428hits a new word.
3429
3430Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
3431Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
3432to be confused by TeX commands.
3433
3434You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
3435correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
3436clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
3437of various alternative replacements and actions.
3438
3439Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
3440the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
3441corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
3442alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
3443flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
3444
3445Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
3446flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
3447
3448** Changes in input method usage.
3449
3450Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
3451the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
3452respectively.
3453
3454You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
3455
3456If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
3457of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
3458
3459The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
3460that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
3461
3462 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
3463
3464 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
3465
3466 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
3467 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
3468
3469 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
79214ddf 3470 given in the following case:
a933dad1
DL
3471 o When you are using a complex input method.
3472 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
3473
3474If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
3475input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
3476and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
3477setting it to t is helpful.
3478
3479The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
3480
3481In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
3482keys:
3483 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
3484 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
3485 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
3486These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
3487environment.
3488
3489** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
3490names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
3491minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
3492get
3493
3494 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
3495
3496which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
3497
3498Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
3499Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
3500
3501** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
3502at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
3503its owner and group.
3504
3505** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
3506Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
3507
3508** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
3509contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
3510
3511** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
3512which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
3513in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
3514by the left edge of the rectangle.
3515
3516** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
3517increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
3518C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
3519for writing keyboard macros.
3520
3521** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
3522files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
3523frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
3524the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
3525additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
3526info.
3527
3528** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
3529
3530** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
3531query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
3532contents only.
3533
3534** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
3535confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
3536the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
3537says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
3538
3539** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
3540non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
3541literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
3542
3543** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
3544now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
3545Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
3546inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
3547
3548** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
3549failure if the command produces no output.
3550
3551** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
3552manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
3553the mouse.
3554
3555** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
3556mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
3557function and variable names.
3558
3559** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
3560reading specific files. This has higher priority than
3561file-coding-system-alist.
3562
3563** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
3564t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
3565converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
3566the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
3567according to the current fontset.
3568
3569** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
3570
3571The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
3572that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
3573nonascii-insert-offset.
3574
3575For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
3576enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
3577nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
3578characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
3579
3580** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
3581an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
3582
3583** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
3584letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
3585
3586** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
3587are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
3588command keys.
3589
3590** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
3591user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
3592
3593Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
3594user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
3595all variables that have documentation.
3596
3597** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
3598shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
3599that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
3600minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
3601it should show; the default is 20.
3602
3603Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
3604the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
3605of your input.
3606
3607** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
3608all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
3609recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
3610argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
3611the customizable options which were changed since that version.
3612Newly added options are included as well.
3613
3614If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
3615then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
3616for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
3617
3618This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
3619Customize menu.
3620
3621** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
3622the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
3623
3624** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
3625buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
3626invoked.
3627
3628** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
3629that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
3630The default is 1.
3631
3632** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
3633syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
3634new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
3635(C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
3636sensibly.
3637
3638** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
3639
3640** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
3641value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
3642two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
3643
3644** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
3645reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
3646for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
3647every night.
3648
3649** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
3650the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
3651
3652** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
3653read and post multi-lingual articles.
3654
3655** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
3656doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
3657be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
3658outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
3659the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
79214ddf 3660made invisible again.
a933dad1
DL
3661
3662** Mail reading and sending changes
3663
3664*** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
3665the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
3666changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
3667toggle.
3668
3669*** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
3670now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
3671summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
3672the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
3673rmail-default-body-file.
3674
3675*** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
3676longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
3677handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
3678
3679*** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
3680it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
3681is evaluated to insert the signature.
3682
3683*** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
3684outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
3685handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
3686putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
3687transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
3688especially interested in trying feedmail.
3689
3690feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
3691feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
3692provided by feedmail are:
3693
3694**** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
3695stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
3696there is also a queue for draft messages
3697
3698**** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
3699be prompted for confirmation
3700
3701**** does smart filling of address headers
3702
3703**** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
3704the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
3705can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
3706
3707**** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
3708the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
3709/usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
3710function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
3711
3712** Dired changes
3713
3714*** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
3715files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
3716
3717*** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
3718run Dired on the directory name at point.
3719
3720*** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
3721files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
3722for a specified regexp.
3723
3724** VC Changes
3725
3726*** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
3727conveniently.
3728
3729*** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
3730faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
3731Dired.
3732
3733VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
3734directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
3735listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
3736currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
3737
3738You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
3739then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
3740vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
3741control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
3742on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
3743
3744All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
3745is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
3746`v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
3747the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
3748`vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
3749
3750The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
3751toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
79214ddf 3752VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
a933dad1
DL
3753`* l', to mark all files currently locked.
3754
3755Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
3756ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
3757command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
3758
3759*** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
3760file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
3761session to resolve them.
3762
3763Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
3764resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
3765contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
3766uses as well).
3767
3768*** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
3769command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
3770you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
3771either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
3772branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
3773If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
3774using ediff.
3775
3776** Changes in Font Lock
3777
3778*** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
3779are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
3780use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
3781unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
3782compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
3783
3784** Frame name display changes
3785
3786*** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
3787frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
3788raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
3789when many frames are invisible or iconified.
3790
3791*** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
3792frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
3793menu.
3794
3795** Comint (subshell) changes
3796
3797*** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
3798subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
3799with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
3800
3801*** There are new commands in Comint mode.
3802
3803C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
3804that is, the line after the last line you got.
3805You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
3806
3807C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
3808send the current line together with the following line, when you send
3809the following line.
3810
3811C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
3812which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
3813previously sent input.
3814
3815C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
3816it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
3817as the search string.
3818
3819*** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
3820automatically in compilation-mode windows.
3821
3822** C mode changes
3823
3824*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
3825and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
3826assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
79214ddf 3827definition.
a933dad1
DL
3828
3829*** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
3830(i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
3831Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
3832style is still the default however.
3833
3834*** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
3835
3836*** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
3837are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
3838them. They do not have key bindings by default.
3839
3840*** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
3841and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
3842
3843*** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3844namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3845
3846*** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3847makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3848
3849*** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3850c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3851
3852*** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3853should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3854package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3855variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3856
3857** Changes to hippie-expand.
3858
79214ddf 3859*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
a933dad1
DL
3860non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3861which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3862
3863*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3864non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3865expanding dynamically.
3866
3867*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3868non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3869
3870*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3871non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3872this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3873expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3874
3875*** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3876
3877** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3878
3879*** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3880bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3881automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3882bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3883against the first word in the title.
3884
3885*** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3886capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3887bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
79214ddf 3888lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
a933dad1 3889lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
79214ddf 3890bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
a933dad1
DL
3891
3892*** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3893generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3894replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3895bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3896
3897** Changes in vcursor.el.
3898
3899*** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3900and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3901variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3902entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3903`vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3904in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3905
3906*** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3907Editing group once the package is loaded.
3908
3909*** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3910generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3911vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3912
3913*** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3914vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3915
3916** Ispell changes.
3917
79214ddf
FP
3918*** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3919buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
a933dad1
DL
3920are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3921
3922*** Generic region skipping implemented.
3923A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3924and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3925defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
79214ddf 3926include:
a933dad1
DL
3927
3928 o URLs are automatically skipped
3929 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3930
3931*** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3932
3933** Changes to RefTeX mode
3934
3935RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3936large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3937re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3938section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3939
3940*** New recursive parser.
3941
3942The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3943entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3944recursive parser scans the individual files.
3945
3946*** Parsing only part of a document.
79214ddf 3947
a933dad1
DL
3948Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3949partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3950the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3951
3952 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3953
3954*** Storing parsing information in a file.
3955
3956This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3957
3958 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3959
3960*** Using multiple selection buffers
3961
3962If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3963for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3964
3965 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3966
3967*** References to external documents.
3968
3969The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3970documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3971documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3972macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3973RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3974the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3975The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3976
3977*** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3978
3979The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3980and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3981
3982Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3983the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3984
3985*** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3986
3987The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3988buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3989
3990*** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3991
3992The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3993contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3994`reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3995have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3996enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3997at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3998more.
3999
4000*** Support for the varioref package
4001
4002The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4003
4004*** New hooks
4005
4006Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4007and citations are created. These hooks are
4008`reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4009`reftex-format-cite-function'.
4010
4011*** Citations outside LaTeX
4012
4013The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4014a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4015
4016*** Short context is no longer fontified.
4017
4018The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4019fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4020fontified, use
4021
4022 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4023
4024** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4025With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4026the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4027directories that contain the same file name.
4028
4029Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4030Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4031file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4032Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4033have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4034names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4035directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4036directory.
4037
4038** New modes and packages
4039
4040*** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4041It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4042it, but some do not.
4043
4044*** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4045code.
4046
4047*** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4048current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4049around in a buffer.
4050
4051Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4052
4053*** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4054uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4055be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4056established system of notation similar to Chess.
4057
4058*** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4059documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4060guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4061
4062*** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4063available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4064system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4065simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4066functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4067the like.
4068
4069*** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4070identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4071
4072*** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4073within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4074used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4075the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4076
4077*** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4078
4079 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4080 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4081 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4082 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4083 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4084 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4085 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4086 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4087 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4088 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4089 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4090
4091 Platform-specific modes:
4092
4093 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4094 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4095 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4096 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4097 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4098 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4099 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4100 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4101 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4102\f
4103* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4104
4105** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4106use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4107That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4108Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4109
4110Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4111you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4112consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4113
4114** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4115and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4116specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4117searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4118
4119** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4120multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4121character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4122environment.
4123
4124** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4125take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4126string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4127current input method for reading this one event.
4128
4129** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4130now control whether to output certain characters as
4131backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4132non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4133characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4134in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4135\f
4136* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4137
4138** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4139of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4140
4141** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4142in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4143always increases point by 1.
4144
4145The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4146considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4147
4148See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4149
4150** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4151Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4152default value changed. For example,
4153
4154 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4155 :type 'integer
4156 :group 'foo
4157 :version "20.3")
4158
79214ddf 4159 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
a933dad1
DL
4160 :version "20.3")
4161
4162If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4163default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4164is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4165`:version' in the top level group.
4166
4167This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4168
4169** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4170starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4171
4172However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4173symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4174support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4175to themselves.
4176
4177If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4178this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4179values whatever.
4180
4181** There is a new debugger command, R.
4182It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4183in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4184
4185** Frame-local variables.
4186
4187You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4188the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4189local bindings for that variable.
4190
4191These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4192frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4193modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4194parameter name.
4195
4196Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4197Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4198active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4199that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4200
4201It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4202clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4203very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4204through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4205
4206** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4207"symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4208evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4209makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4210See the documentation in sregex.el.
4211
4212** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4213is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4214parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4215The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4216
4217** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4218If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4219
4220** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4221known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4222define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4223
4224** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4225when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4226it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4227history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4228
4229The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4230return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4231empty input.
4232
4233** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4234for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4235`iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4236Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4237`read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4238
4239** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4240echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4241a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4242default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4243
4244** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4245specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4246function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4247place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4248non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4249
4250** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4251If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4252up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4253end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4254
4255** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4256which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4257If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4258
4259** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4260holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4261was directed to display this buffer.
4262
4263** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4264with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4265describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4266other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4267set-window-configuration.
4268
4269** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4270window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4271positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4272windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4273
4274** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4275override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4276look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4277
4278If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4279non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4280map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4281
4282minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4283and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4284
4285** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4286except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4287
4288** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4289USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4290floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4291
4292** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
4293to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
4294in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
4295it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
4296
4297** Menu changes
4298
4299*** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
4300keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
4301better supported.
4302
4303The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
4304a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
4305you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
4306can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
4307then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
4308
4309*** A new format for menu items is supported.
4310
4311In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
4312 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
4313defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
4314starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
4315
4316The format is:
4317 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
4318 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
4319where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
4320string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
4321The supported properties include
4322
4323:enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4324 item is enabled.
4325:visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4326 item should appear in the menu.
79214ddf 4327:filter FILTER-FN
a933dad1
DL
4328 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
4329 which will be REAL-BINDING.
4330 It should return a binding to use instead.
4331:keys DESCRIPTION
4332 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
4333 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
4334 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
4335:key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
4336 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
4337 keyboard binding.
4338:key-sequence nil
4339 This means that the command normally has no
4340 keyboard equivalent.
4341:help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
4342:button (TYPE . SELECTED)
4343 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
4344 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
4345 value says whether this button is currently selected.
4346
4347Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
4348Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
4349
4350(menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
4351
4352** New event types
4353
4354*** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
4355mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
4356corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
4357which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
4358
4359 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
4360
4361where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4362same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
4363indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
4364negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
4365the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
4366forward, away from the user.
4367
4368As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4369
4370*** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
4371files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
4372and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
4373filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
4374loaded into Emacs. The format is:
4375
4376 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
4377
4378where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4379same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
4380that were dragged and dropped.
4381
4382As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4383
4384** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
4385
4386*** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
4387any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
4388to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
4389
4390*** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
4391can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
4392that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
4393
4394*** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
4395in Emacs 19 and before.
4396
4397The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
4398The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
4399
4400*** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
4401buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
4402unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
4403representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
4404
4405This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
4406as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
4407viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
4408one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
4409will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
4410
4411This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
4412representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
4413(including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
4414consistent with the new representation.
4415
4416*** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
4417representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
4418about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
4419however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4420
4421The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
4422nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
4423using the table nonascii-translation-table.
4424
4425*** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
4426representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
4427representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4428
4429The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
4430loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
4431is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
4432
4433*** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4434which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
4435
4436*** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4437which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
4438
4439*** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
4440portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
4441so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
4442You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
4443
4444*** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
4445it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
4446
4447*** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
4448convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
4449buffer or string being searched.
4450
4451One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
4452[...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
4453searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
4454searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
4455obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
4456you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
4457expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
4458
4459*** Structure of coding system changed.
4460
4461All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
4462by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
4463which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
4464as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
4465vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
4466your own alias name of a coding system by the function
4467define-coding-system-alias.
4468
4469The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
4470the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
4471access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
4472pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
4473character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
4474safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
4475'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
4476`iso-8859-1'.
4477
4478Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
4479The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
4480coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
4481(coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
4482
4483Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
4484also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
4485are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
4486the other character sets and read it back correctly.
4487
4488*** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
4489proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
4490This function requires a user interaction.
4491
4492*** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
4493find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
4494select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
4495systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
4496a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
4497select-safe-coding-system.
4498
4499*** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
4500decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
4501last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
4502was done.
4503
4504*** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
4505used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
4506coding systems used by some specific language environment.
4507
4508*** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
4509return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
4510characters are found, they now return a list of single element
4511`undecided' or its subsidiaries.
4512
4513*** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
4514coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
4515coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
4516converted.
4517
4518*** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
4519coding system for communicating with other X clients.
4520
4521*** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
4522character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
4523character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
4524each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
4525either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
4526range of characters.
4527
4528*** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
4529Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
4530
4531*** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
4532in the current buffer at position POS.
4533
4534*** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
4535input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
4536function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
4537character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
4538event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
4539binding input-method-function to nil.
4540
4541The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
4542method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
4543input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
4544the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
4545not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
4546
4547The input method function is not called when reading the second and
4548subsequent events of a key sequence.
4549
4550*** You can customize any language environment by using
4551set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
4552
4553The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
4554customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
4555instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
4556environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
4557exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
4558\f
4559* Changes in Emacs 20.1
4560
4561** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
4562options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
4563at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
4564tree structure.
4565
4566M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
4567user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
4568
4569With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
4570session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
4571in your .emacs file.)
4572
4573** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
4574You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
4575
4576** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
4577This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
4578
4579** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
4580immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
4581kills the region.
4582
4583The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
4584delete the character before point, as usual.
4585
4586** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
4587on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
4588by setting search-highlight to nil.)
4589
4590** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
4591insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
4592the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
4593onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
4594history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
4595past.)
4596
4597** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
4598This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
4599in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
4600TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
4601makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
4602
4603As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
4604and is an alias for it.
4605
4606If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
4607use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
4608
4609** Scrolling changes
4610
4611*** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
4612position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
4613
4614In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
4615on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
4616where it started.
4617
4618*** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
4619move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
4620screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
4621does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
4622
4623*** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
4624top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
4625comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
4626recenters the window.
4627
4628** International character set support (MULE)
4629
4630Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
4631including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
4632Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
4633Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
4634features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
4635MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
4636
4637Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
4638coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
4639character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
4640variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
4641into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
4642
4643Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
4644generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
4645supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
4646language, to make it possible to type them.
4647
4648The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
4649character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
4650
4651The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
4652to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
4653
4654You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
4655
4656 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
4657
4658Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
4659characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
4660argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
4661already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
4662characters for their work until they want to change.
4663
4664*** Input methods
4665
4666An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
4667specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
4668has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
4669the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
4670support several input methods.
4671
4672The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
4673another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
4674work.
4675
4676A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
4677characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
4678composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
4679consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
4680sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
4681letter.
4682
4683The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
4684by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
4685First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
4686marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
4687mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
4688
4689None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
4690they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
4691phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
4692converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
4693
4694Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
4695word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
4696typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
4697the first guess is wrong.
4698
4699*** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
4700turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
4701
4702If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
4703byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
4704they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
4705the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
4706
4707However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
4708use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
4709includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
4710translate automatically to and from either one.
4711
4712*** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
4713
4714Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
4715file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
4716sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
4717what you want.
4718
4719If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
4720example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
4721system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
4722multibyte characters in that buffer.
4723
4724If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
4725character conversion as well.
4726
4727*** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
4728
4729A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
4730Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
4731requires using many fonts.
4732
4733Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
4734collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
4735
4736A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
4737the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
4738have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
4739you would use a font.
4740
4741If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
4742specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
4743display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
4744
4745The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
4746(that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
4747characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
4748or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
4749and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
4750
4751*** Defining fontsets.
4752
4753Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
4754chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
4755with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
4756
4757Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
4758of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
4759`fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
4760standard fontset are created automatically.
4761
4762If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
4763argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
4764FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
4765with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
4766name is `fontset-startup'.
4767
4768Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
4769The resource value should have this form:
4770 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
4771FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
4772 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
4773 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
4774 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
4775The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
4776of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
4777CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
4778FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
4779
4780Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
4781last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
4782You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
4783
4784For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
4785font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
4786following resource,
4787 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
4788the font for ASCII is generated as below:
4789 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
4790Here is the substitution rule:
4791 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
4792 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
4793 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
4794 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
4795 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
4796
4797The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
4798fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
4799that function explicitly to create a fontset.
4800
4801With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
4802like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
4803name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
4804fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
4805fontsets.
4806
4807*** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
4808defaults for a particular choice of language.
4809
4810Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
4811method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
4812visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
4813already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
4814language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
4815system for new files that you create.
4816
4817It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
4818set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
4819whole Emacs session.
4820
4821For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
4822chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
4823with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
4824
4825*** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
4826specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
4827specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
4828the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
4829coding systems that Emacs supports.
4830
4831*** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
4832lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
4833This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
4834After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
4835is used for *the immediately following command*.
4836
4837So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
4838write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
4839
4840If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
4841then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
4842
4843For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4844visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4845
4846*** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4847construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4848to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4849specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4850of the file.
4851
4852*** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4853the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4854code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4855translated into that character code.
4856
4857This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4858various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4859
4860By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4861
4862*** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4863the coding system for keyboard input.
4864
4865Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4866with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4867some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4868
4869By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4870
4871Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4872input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4873translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4874to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4875designed to work with terminals.
4876
4877*** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4878specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4879This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4880has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4881translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4882in the corresponding buffer.
4883
4884By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4885
4886*** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4887to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4888It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4889
4890*** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4891an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4892command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4893want to use.
4894
4895C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4896method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4897
4898*** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4899layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4900remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4901which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4902
4903*** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4904the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4905related information.
4906
4907*** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4908HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4909scripts.
4910
4911*** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4912information about the support for a particular language.
4913You specify the language as an argument.
4914
4915*** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4916the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4917first dash.
4918
4919A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4920(except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4921whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
49221 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4923
4924 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4925 B big5 (Chinese)
4926 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4927 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4928 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4929 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4930 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4931 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4932 K euc-korea (Korean)
4933 R koi8 (Russian)
4934 Q tibetan
4935 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4936 T lao
4937 T tis620 (Thai)
4938 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4939 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4940 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4941 v viqr (Vietnamese)
4942 z hz (Chinese)
4943
4944When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4945two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4946coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4947keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4948
4949*** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4950conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4951
4952When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4953into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4954rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4955Rmail files themselves.
4956
4957*** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4958conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4959
4960Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4961for sending mail:
4962
4963- If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4964- Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4965- Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4966 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4967- Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4968
4969*** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4970to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4971Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4972translations.
4973
4974** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4975of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4976insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4977without any conversion.
4978
4979** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4980You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4981RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4982any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4983
4984** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4985functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4986
4987Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4988Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4989
4990Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4991mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4992
4993** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4994complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4995in the buffer before point.
4996
4997With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4998symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4999you are using.
5000
5001With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5002just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5003
5004** File locking works with NFS now.
5005
5006The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5007in the same directory as FILENAME.
5008
5009This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5010works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5011can become a bottleneck.
5012
5013The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5014does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5015create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5016file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5017rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5018so useful that the change is worth while.
5019
5020When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5021are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5022collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5023tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5024
5025** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5026it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5027show-paren-mode.
5028
5029** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5030selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5031delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5032
5033** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5034within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5035complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5036
5037** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5038it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5039set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5040
5041** Changes in View mode.
5042
5043*** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5044Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5045
5046*** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5047view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5048
5049*** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5050previous state.
5051
5052*** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5053scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5054
5055*** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5056non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5057not just the selected window.
5058
5059*** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5060read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5061turns View mode on or off.
5062
5063*** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5064how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5065delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5066
5067** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5068now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5069
5070** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5071has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5072presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5073which version to compare with.
5074
5075** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
79214ddf 5076blocks if a match is inside the block.
a933dad1
DL
5077
5078The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5079is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5080isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5081shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5082
5083By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5084of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5085blocks, all of them or none.
5086
5087** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5088current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5089confirmation first.
5090
5091** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5092now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5093However, the mode will not be changed if
5094(1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5095(2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5096 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5097(3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5098
5099This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5100
5101However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5102these commands do not change the major mode.
5103
5104** M-x occur changes.
5105
5106*** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5107it performs a case-sensitive search.
5108
5109*** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5110if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5111using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5112
5113** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5114in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5115window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5116that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5117buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5118
5119** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5120after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5121appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5122come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5123
5124** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5125selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5126buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5127
5128** Outline mode changes.
5129
5130*** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5131
5132*** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5133
5134** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5135you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5136Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5137was already active.
5138
5139The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5140unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5141get confused by it.
5142
5143If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5144set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5145
5146** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5147
5148*** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5149conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5150character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5151including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5152
5153The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5154mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5155copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5156
5157*** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5158are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5159values.
5160
5161`dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5162case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5163`dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5164case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5165
5166** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5167certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5168can be. The default value is 30.
5169
5170** Changes in Mail mode.
5171
5172*** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5173Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5174composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5175`mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5176`sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5177behavior.
5178
5179C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5180compose-mail-other-frame.
5181
5182*** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5183the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5184replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5185buffer that shows the original message.
5186
5187*** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5188with separator lines around the contents.
5189
5190*** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5191in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5192definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5193need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5194
5195*** New features in the mail-complete command.
5196
5197**** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5198for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5199controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5200Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5201
5202**** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5203to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5204/etc/passwd.
5205
5206**** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5207to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5208/etc/passwd.
5209
5210** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5211special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5212directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5213reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5214
5215Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5216when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5217be taken to be magic.
5218
5219** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5220files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5221available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5222
5223M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5224(-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5225
5226** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5227suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5228
5229In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5230
5231new key dired.el binding old key
5232------- ---------------- -------
5233 * c dired-change-marks c
5234 * m dired-mark m
5235 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5236 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5237 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5238 * u dired-unmark u
5239 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5240 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5241 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5242 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5243 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5244 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5245
5246** Rmail changes.
5247
5248*** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5249saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5250chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5251each time you run it.
5252
5253*** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5254whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5255
5256*** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5257messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5258means to move in the opposite direction.
5259
5260*** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5261you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5262
5263*** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5264just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5265It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5266can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5267for output.
5268
5269** Gnus changes.
5270
5271*** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5272
79214ddf
FP
5273*** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5274Gnus.
a933dad1 5275
79214ddf 5276*** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
a933dad1
DL
5277`and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5278
5279*** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5280article mode line.
5281
5282*** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5283
5284*** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5285
5286(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5287
5288*** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5289are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5290`gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5291
5292*** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
5293
5294*** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
5295
5296*** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
5297See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
5298
5299*** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
5300Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
5301used to pick articles.
5302
5303*** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
5304another have been added.
5305
5306 `M-x gnus-change-server'
5307
5308*** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
5309generating lines in buffers.
5310
5311*** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
5312`M-C-_'.
5313
5314*** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
5315
5316*** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
5317
5318 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
5319
5320*** Scores can be decayed.
79214ddf 5321
a933dad1
DL
5322 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
5323
5324*** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
5325Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
5326
5327*** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
5328the native server.
5329
5330 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
5331
5332*** A new command for reading collections of documents
5333(nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
5334
5335*** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
5336
5337*** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
5338even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
5339
5340*** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
5341(DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
5342
5343 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
5344 a group.
5345
5346*** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
5347sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
5348
5349 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
5350
5351*** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
5352
5353 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
5354
5355*** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
79214ddf 5356
a933dad1
DL
5357 Use the `Y c' command.
5358
5359*** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
5360
5361*** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
5362
5363 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
5364
5365*** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
5366from incoming mail before saving the mail.
79214ddf 5367
a933dad1
DL
5368 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
5369
5370*** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
5371
5372*** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
5373the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
5374
5375 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
5376
5377Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
5378and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
5379from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
5380hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
5381this issue.)
5382
5383Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
5384automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
5385particular news group. This can be done by:
5386
5387 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
5388
5389Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
5390of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
5391"XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
5392system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
5393for reading and posting).
5394
5395CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
5396 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
5397Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
5398newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
5399there.
5400
5401Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
5402default. Here are some of these default settings:
5403
5404 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
5405 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
5406 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
5407 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
5408 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
5409
5410When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
5411the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
5412
5413** CC mode changes.
5414
5415*** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
5416code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
5417values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
5418this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
5419Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
5420loaded.
5421
5422If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
79214ddf 5423Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
a933dad1 5424style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
79214ddf
FP
5425share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
5426c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
a933dad1
DL
5427must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
5428
5429*** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
5430of the current buffer.
5431
5432*** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
5433it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
5434of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
5435
5436*** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
5437style that the Python developers like.
5438
5439*** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
5440This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
5441just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
5442
5443** VC Changes [new]
5444
5445** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
5446name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
5447directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
5448
5449This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
5450master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
5451developers.
5452
5453You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
5454RET in a buffer visiting that file.
5455
5456*** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
5457other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
5458writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
5459calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
5460
5461*** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
5462version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
5463
5464** Calendar changes.
5465
5466A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
5467of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
5468for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
5469
5470** ps-print changes
5471
79214ddf 5472There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
a933dad1
DL
5473
5474*** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
5475
5476The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
5477formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
5478`a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
5479`ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
5480It defaults to `letter'.
5481If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
5482
5483The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
79214ddf 5484of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
a933dad1
DL
5485non-nil means "landscape" mode.
5486
5487The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
5488It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
79214ddf 5489It defaults to 1.
a933dad1
DL
5490
5491*** Horizontal layout
5492
5493The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
5494`ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
5495All are measured in points.
5496
5497*** Vertical layout
5498
5499The vertical layout is determined by the variables
5500`ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
5501All are measured in points.
5502
5503*** Headers
5504
5505If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
5506`ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
5507margin above the text.
5508
79214ddf 5509If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
a933dad1
DL
5510framing box is printed around the header.
5511
5512The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
5513`ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
5514
79214ddf
FP
5515The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
5516`ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
a933dad1
DL
5517`ps-header-font-size'.
5518
5519*** Font managing
5520
5521The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
5522used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
5523`ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
5524elements to this alist.
5525
79214ddf 5526The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
a933dad1
DL
5527for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
5528
5529** hideshow changes.
5530
5531*** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
79214ddf 5532C++, ; for lisp).
a933dad1
DL
5533
5534*** Support for java-mode added.
5535
5536*** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
5537in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
5538
5539*** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
5540the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
5541way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
5542
5543*** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
5544robust and a lot faster.
5545
79214ddf 5546*** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
a933dad1
DL
5547
5548*** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
5549to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
5550documentation for more details.
5551
5552** Changes in Enriched mode.
5553
5554*** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
5555filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
5556of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
5557use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
5558the next time unless the fill-column is different.
5559
5560*** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
5561distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
5562as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
5563as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
5564
5565** Font Lock mode
5566
5567*** Custom support
5568
5569The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
5570font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
5571faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
5572group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
5573your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
5574consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
5575
5576You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
5577
5578*** Maximum decoration
5579
5580Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
5581default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
5582of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
5583supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
5584to get the old behavior.
5585
5586*** New support
5587
5588Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
5589
5590Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
5591support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
5592
5593*** Configurable support
5594
5595Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
5596additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
5597c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
5598java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
5599list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
5600of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
5601convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
5602
5603Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
5604way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
5605it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
5606
5607*** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
5608
5609You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
5610highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
5611for any mode.
5612
5613For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
5614
5615 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
5616
5617in your ~/.emacs.
5618
5619*** New faces
5620
5621Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
5622font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
5623distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
5624to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
5625
5626*** Changes to fast-lock support mode
5627
5628The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
5629cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
5630same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
5631
5632*** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
5633
5634The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
5635according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
5636the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
5637non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
5638refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
5639the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
5640Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
5641
5642This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
5643For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
5644this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
5645refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
5646containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
5647the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
5648
5649As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
5650
5651Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
5652Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
5653Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
5654new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
5655
5656If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
5657settings.
5658
5659** Ada mode changes.
5660
5661*** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
5662If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
5663procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
5664you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
5665stubs.
5666
5667*** There are two new commands:
5668 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
5669 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
5670
5671The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
5672`ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
79214ddf 5673`ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
a933dad1
DL
5674
5675*** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
5676is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
5677Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
5678
5679*** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
5680formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
5681places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
5682space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
5683
5684** Scheme mode changes.
5685
5686*** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
5687mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
5688for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
5689with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
5690have any effect.
5691
5692If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
5693still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
5694scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
5695variables as buffer-local variables.
5696
5697*** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
5698Use M-x dsssl-mode.
5699
133c9e59
GM
5700** Changes to the emacsclient program
5701
875c1439
GM
5702*** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
5703USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
5704associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
5705can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
5706
133c9e59 5707*** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
a933dad1
DL
5708it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
5709buffer in Emacs.
5710
133c9e59
GM
5711*** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
5712use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
5713ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
5714option takes precedence.
5715
a933dad1
DL
5716** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
5717constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
5718(in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
5719
5720** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
5721which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
5722the current defun.
5723
5724** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
5725following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
5726
5727** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
5728and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
5729necessary).
5730
5731** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
5732if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
5733these register values no longer become completely useless.
5734If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
5735asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
5736it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
5737
5738** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
5739example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
5740be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
5741you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
5742
5743You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
5744variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
5745file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
5746revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
5747only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
5748
5749** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
5750since it applies only to the current frame.
5751
5752** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
5753file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
5754and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
5755
5756This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
5757multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
5758variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
5759tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
5760instead of just the file you are editing.
5761
5762** RefTeX mode
5763
5764RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
5765and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
5766different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
5767multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
5768turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
5769
79214ddf 5770C-c ( reftex-label
a933dad1
DL
5771 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
5772 knows which kind of label is needed.
5773
5774C-c ) reftex-reference
5775 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
5776 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
5777
5778C-c [ reftex-citation
5779 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
5780 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
5781
5782C-c & reftex-view-crossref
5783 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
5784
5785C-c = reftex-toc
5786 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
5787 can quickly jump to every section.
79214ddf 5788
a933dad1
DL
5789Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
5790commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
5791Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
5792reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
5793C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
5794
5795** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5796
5797*** Info documentation is now available.
5798
5799*** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
5800both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
5801
5802*** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
5803bibtex-user-optional-fields.
5804
5805*** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
5806(use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
5807
5808*** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
5809entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
5810appropriate functions.
5811
5812*** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
5813entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
5814
5815*** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
5816been cleaned.
5817
5818*** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
5819bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
5820
5821*** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
5822shall be delimited.
5823
5824*** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
5825bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
5826bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
5827
5828*** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
5829field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
5830prefixed with `ALT'.
5831
5832*** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
5833bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
5834formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
5835documentation).
5836
5837*** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
5838documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
5839for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
5840
5841*** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
5842comma should be inserted at end of last field.
5843
5844*** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
5845alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
5846signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
5847
5848*** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
5849
5850*** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
5851
5852*** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
5853from alien sources.
5854
5855*** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5856to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5857crossref entries.
5858
5859*** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5860region.
5861
5862*** Added support for imenu.
5863
5864*** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5865of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5866`compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5867`next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5868
5869*** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5870from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5871
5872** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5873
30a009a5 5874** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
047f434a 5875
a933dad1
DL
5876** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5877functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5878Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5879as an argument.
5880
5881When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5882and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5883
5884** browse-url changes
5885
5886*** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5887Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5888(browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5889non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5890customization variables.
5891
5892*** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5893
5894*** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5895lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5896(e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5897
5898** Changes in Ediff
5899
5900*** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5901pops up the Info file for this command.
5902
5903*** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5904the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5905merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
5906directories).
5907
5908*** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
5909and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
5910files in the same directory.
5911
5912*** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
5913The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5914related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5915
5916** Changes in Viper
5917
5918*** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
79214ddf 5919*** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
a933dad1
DL
5920 instead of vip-.
5921*** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
79214ddf 5922*** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
a933dad1
DL
5923Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5924*** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5925*** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5926*** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5927color when Viper is in insert state.
5928*** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5929Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5930viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5931
5932** Etags changes.
5933
5934*** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5935default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5936Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5937variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5938not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5939
5940*** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5941
5942*** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5943constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5944
5945*** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5946recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5947In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5948
5949*** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5950C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5951recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5952methods and protocols.
5953
5954*** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5955.cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5956column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5957paragraph name.
5958
5959*** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5960an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5961at least M times and as many as N times.
5962
5963** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5964in files has changed slightly.
5965
5966With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5967time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5968This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5969with old time-stamp-format values.
5970
5971In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5972(`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5973This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5974reasons.
5975
5976In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5977natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5978fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5979(`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5980time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5981specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5982
5983Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5984case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5985truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5986
5987The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5988being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5989future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5990recommended now will continue to work then.
5991
5992See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5993details.
5994
5995** There are some additional major modes:
5996
5997dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5998m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5999meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6000
6001** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6002copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6003into Emacs.
6004
6005** New Lisp packages include:
6006
6007*** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6008
6009*** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6010be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6011
6012*** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6013
6014*** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6015in shell buffers.
6016
6017*** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6018See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6019and `elint-defun'.
6020
6021*** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6022meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6023ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6024strings or comments.
6025
6026These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6027abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6028you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6029insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6030at these points.
6031
6032*** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6033can visit them by short forms of their names.
6034
6035*** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6036Emacs Lisp function at point.
6037
6038*** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6039
6040*** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6041switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6042
6043*** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6044
6045*** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6046
6047*** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6048
6049*** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6050from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6051
6052*** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6053You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6054inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6055original place after inserting the copy.
6056
6057*** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6058on the buffer.
6059
6060You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6061velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6062(with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6063
6064Enable mouse-drag with:
6065 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6066-or-
6067 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6068
6069*** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6070mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6071
6072*** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6073It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6074
6075*** ogonek
6076
6077The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6078Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6079platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6080TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6081ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6082prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6083instance) and vice versa.
6084
6085To use this package load it using
6086 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6087Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
79214ddf 6088 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
a933dad1
DL
6089 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6090The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6091ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6092
6093*** Interface to ph.
6094
6095Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6096
6097The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6098services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6099these servers.
6100
6101*** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6102
6103*** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6104You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6105while the real cursor does not move.
6106
6107*** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6108for visiting your favorite web sites.
6109
6110*** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6111so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6112
6113** movemail change
6114
6115Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6116mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6117supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6118user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6119
6120This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6121\f
6122* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6123
6124** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6125
6126Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6127end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6128Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6129file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6130file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6131
6132To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6133C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6134coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6135specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6136LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6137save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6138\f
6139* Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6140
6141** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6142Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6143vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6144Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6145
6146** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6147to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6148
6149In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6150don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6151"win".
6152
6153** Basic Lisp changes
6154
6155*** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6156evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6157
6158*** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6159be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6160or by the user.
6161
6162The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6163
6164*** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6165
6166(when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6167(unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6168
6169*** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6170usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6171its argument.
6172
6173*** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6174
6175*** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6176
6177*** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6178
6179*** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6180error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6181include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6182`format' function.
6183
6184*** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6185or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6186whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6187
6188*** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6189either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6190adding one of these suffixes.
6191
6192*** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6193which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
79214ddf 6194If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
a933dad1
DL
6195
6196We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6197because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6198
6199*** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6200
6201*** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6202You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6203
6204*** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6205conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6206
6207 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6208
6209BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6210BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6211
6212*** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6213choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6214restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6215works using `save-current-buffer'.
6216
6217*** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6218write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6219of the last form.
6220
6221*** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6222which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6223last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6224as the last form.
6225
6226*** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6227characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6228matches.
6229
6230For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6231
6232*** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6233with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6234Then it returns that string.
6235
6236For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6237
6238(with-output-to-string
6239 (princ "The buffer is ")
6240 (princ (buffer-name)))
6241
6242returns "The buffer is foo".
6243
6244** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6245is non-nil.
6246
6247These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6248buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6249characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6250
6251*** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6252a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6253
6254Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6255character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6256Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6257position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6258characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6259 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6260
6261ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6262Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6263non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6264characters".
6265
6266The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6267through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6268"leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6269range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6270leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6271
6272*** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6273(forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6274multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6275character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6276
6277This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6278always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6279
6280However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
79214ddf 6281
a933dad1
DL
6282*** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6283because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6284have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6285the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6286guaranteed.
6287
6288*** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6289between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6290character).
6291
6292When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
6293
6294 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
6295 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
6296 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
6297 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
6298 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
6299
6300*** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
6301
6302*** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
6303`length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
6304more than the number of characters.
6305
6306You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
6307it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
6308\xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
6309is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
6310follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
6311newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
6312
6313*** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
6314and returns a string containing those characters.
6315
6316*** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
6317(sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
6318counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
6319character, sref signals an error.
6320
6321*** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
6322in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
6323string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6324
6325*** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
6326in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
6327region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6328
6329*** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
6330the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
6331to a vector of the characters in it.
6332
6333*** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
6334of a string. You call it as follows:
6335
6336 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
6337
6338This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
6339STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
6340This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
6341Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
6342it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
6343
6344*** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
6345if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6346
6347*** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
6348if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6349
6350*** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
6351to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
6352not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
6353which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
6354
6355(truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
6356
6357This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
6358
6359The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
6360If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
6361are not included in the resulting value.
6362
6363The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
6364at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
6365WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
6366is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
6367
6368If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
6369place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
6370character extends across that column), then the padding character
6371PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
6372string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
6373column START-COLUMN.
6374
6375*** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
6376the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
6377necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
6378difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
6379changed text, before the change.
6380
6381*** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
6382sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
6383one character set for each script, not for each language.
6384
6385**** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
6386
6387**** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
6388
6389**** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
6390set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
6391
6392**** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
6393name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
6394which identify the character within that character set.
6395
6396**** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
6397byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
6398opposite of split-char.
6399
6400**** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
6401of all the characters between BEG and END.
6402
6403**** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
6404of all the characters in a string.
6405
6406*** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
6407and specifying coding systems.
6408
6409**** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
6410system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
6411of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
6412(Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
6413and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
6414as what to do about code conversion.)
6415
6416**** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
6417name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
6418
6419**** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6420for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6421except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
6422
6423Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6424which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
6425to match against a file name.
6426
6427VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6428a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6429decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6430to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6431systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6432specifies the coding system for encoding.
6433
6434If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6435or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6436
6437**** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
6438the coding system to use for network sockets.
6439
6440Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6441which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
6442either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
6443service names.
6444
6445VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6446a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6447decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6448to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6449systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6450specifies the coding system for encoding.
6451
6452If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6453or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6454
6455**** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6456for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6457except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
6458start the subprocess.
6459
6460**** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
6461systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
6462when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
6463(OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
6464to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
6465
6466**** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
6467coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
6468subprocess.
6469
6470It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
6471but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
6472start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
6473connection permanently or until overridden.
6474
6475The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
6476file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
6477network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
6478coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
6479It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
6480system for one operation at a time.
6481
6482**** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
6483files, subprocesses or network connections.
6484
6485**** The function process-coding-system tells you what
6486coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
6487The value is a cons cell,
6488 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
6489where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
6490the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
6491input to the subprocess.
6492
6493**** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
6494change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
6495
6496** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
6497customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
6498you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
6499
6500You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
6501variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
6502information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
6503legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
6504customization.
6505
6506Thus, instead of writing
6507
6508 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
6509 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
6510
6511you would now write this:
6512
6513 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
6514 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
6515 :type 'boolean
6516 :group foo)
6517
6518The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
6519two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
6520describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
6521for a description of them.
6522
6523The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
6524should belong to. You define a new group like this:
6525
6526 (defgroup ispell nil
6527 "Spell checking using Ispell."
6528 :group 'processes)
6529
6530The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
6531group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
6532but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
6533to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
6534second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
6535
6536Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
6537package should have just one group; a more complex package should
6538have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
6539package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
6540first-level subgroups.
6541
6542** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
6543
6544This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
6545separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
6546
6547** easy-mmode
6548
6549The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
6550developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
6551only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
6552predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
6553`easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
6554`easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
6555
6556** Text property changes
6557
6558*** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
6559text property.
6560
6561*** The new functions next-char-property-change and
6562previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
6563place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
6564functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
6565starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
6566
6567If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
6568LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
6569of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
6570position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
6571
6572*** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
6573value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
6574is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
6575
6576** Changes in invisibility features
6577
6578*** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
6579hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
6580is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
6581should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
6582would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
6583make the overlay visible.
6584
6585During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
6586invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
6587needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
6588which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
6589the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
6590t when it should hide it.
6591
6592*** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
6593
6594Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
79214ddf
FP
6595invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
6596and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
a933dad1 6597Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
79214ddf 6598manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
a933dad1
DL
6599Here is an example of how to do this:
6600
6601 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
79214ddf 6602 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
a933dad1 6603 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
79214ddf 6604 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
a933dad1
DL
6605
6606 ...
6607 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
6608
6609 ...
6610 ;; When done with the overlays:
6611 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
6612 ;; Or respectively:
6613 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
6614
6615** Changes in syntax parsing.
6616
6617*** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
6618`parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
6619obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
6620`parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
6621
6622If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
6623is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
6624used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
6625
6626When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
6627character in the buffer is calculated thus:
6628
6629 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
6630 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
6631
6632 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
6633 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
6634 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
6635
6636 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
6637 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
6638 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
6639 determine the syntax type of the character.
6640
6641 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
6642 of the current buffer.
6643
6644*** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
6645value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
6646for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
6647
6648*** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
6649and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
6650only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
6651character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
6652another character with the same code (unless quoted).
6653
6654These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
6655text property.
6656
6657*** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
6658arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
6659of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
6660
6661*** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
6662(and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
6663element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
6664nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
6665string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
6666
6667*** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
6668syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
6669`font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
6670
6671** Changes in face features
6672
6673*** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
6674if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
6675
6676*** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
6677of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
6678
6679*** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
6680set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
6681
6682*** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
6683set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
6684
6685*** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
6686by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
6687and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
6688the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
6689overlay property).
6690
6691This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
6692arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
6693
6694** Changes in file-handling functions
6695
6696*** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
6697directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
6698they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
6699is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
6700
6701This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
6702begins with ~.
6703
6704*** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
6705it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
6706
6707*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
6708the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
6709
6710*** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
6711as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
6712
6713*** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
6714character code conversion as well as other things.
6715
6716Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
6717(formerly it did not).
6718
6719*** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
6720environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
6721
6722*** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
6723instead of constant strings.
6724
6725*** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
6726to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
6727any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
6728
6729substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
6730in the same way as before.
6731
6732*** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
6733The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
6734which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
6735
6736*** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
6737error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
6738else, and returns nil.
6739
6740*** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
6741directory cannot be listed.
6742
6743** Changes in minibuffer input
6744
6745*** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
6746read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
6747additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
6748argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
6749ways:
6750
6751 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
6752 It is available through the history command M-n.
6753
6754*** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
6755read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
6756argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
6757minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
6758enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
6759
6760In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
6761argument in this way.
6762
6763*** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
6764from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
6765minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
6766
6767** Echo area features
6768
6769*** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
6770echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
6771minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
6772after the echo area is cleared.
6773
6774*** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
6775in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
6776
6777** Keyboard input features
6778
6779*** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
6780set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
6781
6782*** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
6783received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
6784by keyboard macros.
6785
6786** Frame-related changes
6787
6788*** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
6789creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
6790hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
6791
6792*** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
6793the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
6794has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
6795
6796*** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6797selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
6798value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
6799in the selected frame.
6800
6801*** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
6802is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
6803which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
6804
6805** X Windows features
6806
6807*** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
6808x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
6809x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
6810
6811*** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
6812The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
6813
6814*** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
6815MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
6816A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
6817
6818If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
6819it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
6820
6821** Subprocess features
6822
6823*** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
6824functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
6825automatically.
6826
6827*** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
6828and returns the output from the command as a string.
6829
6830*** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
6831and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
6832
6833** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
6834does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
6835
6836** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
6837at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
6838goes after the other menu items.
6839
6840** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
79214ddf 6841of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
a933dad1
DL
6842around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
6843are in use.
6844
6845The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
6846series of several changes--if that seems safe.
6847
6848Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
6849after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
6850form.
6851
6852** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
6853is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
6854but its hook is still run.
6855
6856** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6857for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6858
6859If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6860regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6861useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6862
6863This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6864are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6865filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6866warned.
6867
6868** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6869way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6870
6871** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6872integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6873functions like display-time.
6874
6875** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6876name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6877
6878** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6879can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6880is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6881
6882** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6883if there is an error in compilation.
6884
6885** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6886switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6887argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6888they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6889
6890** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6891Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6892the *scratch* buffer.
6893
6894** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6895The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6896where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6897e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6898
6899** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6900and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6901It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6902
6903** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6904using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6905variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
6906and compose-mail-other-frame.
6907
6908** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
6909can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
6910full name of the specified user will be returned.
6911
6912** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
6913of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6914where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6915in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6916option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6917files at all.
6918
6919** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6920and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6921width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6922the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6923
6924For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6925minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6926with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6927is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6928
6929** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6930
6931** imenu.el changes.
6932
6933You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
79214ddf 6934item from menu created by imenu.
a933dad1
DL
6935
6936An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6937#include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6938select one of those items.
6939\f
6940* Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6941\f
6942* Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6943
6944** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6945mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6946
6947** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6948use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6949Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6950\f
6951* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6952
6953** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6954To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6955
6956** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6957conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6958matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6959expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6960word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6961all caps.
6962
6963** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6964at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6965
6966When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6967does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6968as in previous Emacs versions.
6969
6970** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6971non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6972time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6973frames.
6974
6975** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6976if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6977This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6978Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6979accident.
6980
6981** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6982keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6983It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6984line and then executing the macro.
6985
6986This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6987
6988** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6989(something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6990characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6991characters.
6992
6993** Font Lock mode
6994
6995*** Font Lock support modes
6996
6997Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6998below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6999hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7000to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7001Font Lock mode is enabled.
7002
7003For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7004
7005 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7006
7007in your ~/.emacs.
7008
7009*** lazy-lock
7010
7011The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7012only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7013becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7014Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7015occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7016buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7017Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7018
7019To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7020
7021 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7022
7023To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7024
7025** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7026
7027*** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7028paren and key.
7029
7030*** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7031supported.
7032
7033** Gnus changes.
7034
7035Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7036commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7037significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7038previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7039
7040Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7041between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7042
79214ddf 7043*** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
a933dad1
DL
7044variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7045obsolete.
7046
7047*** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7048missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7049
7050 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7051
7052*** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7053
7054 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7055
7056*** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
79214ddf 7057referred.
a933dad1
DL
7058
7059*** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7060
7061 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7062
7063*** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7064
7065 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7066
7067*** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
79214ddf 7068buffers.
a933dad1
DL
7069
7070 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7071
7072*** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7073
7074 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7075
7076*** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7077
7078 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7079
7080*** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7081
7082 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7083
7084*** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7085is possible.
7086
7087 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7088
7089*** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7090groups of groups.
7091
7092*** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7093
7094*** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
79214ddf 7095batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
a933dad1
DL
7096
7097*** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7098
7099*** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7100
7101*** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7102
7103 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7104
7105*** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7106expiration times.
7107
7108*** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7109
7110*** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7111process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7112
7113*** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7114articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7115bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7116
7117*** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7118articles with the `*' command.
7119
7120*** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7121
7122*** Article headers can be buttonized.
7123
7124 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7125
7126*** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7127
79214ddf 7128*** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
a933dad1
DL
7129`nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7130
7131*** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
79214ddf 7132buffer.
a933dad1
DL
7133
7134*** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7135
7136*** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7137
7138*** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7139
7140 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7141
79214ddf 7142*** Groups can be made permanently visible.
a933dad1
DL
7143
7144 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7145
79214ddf 7146*** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
a933dad1
DL
7147
7148*** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7149
79214ddf 7150*** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
a933dad1 7151
79214ddf 7152 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
a933dad1
DL
7153 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7154
7155*** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
79214ddf 7156refetching.
a933dad1
DL
7157
7158 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7159
7160*** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7161buffer to allow easier treatment.
7162
7163*** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7164
7165*** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7166
7167 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7168
7169*** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
79214ddf 7170articles.
a933dad1
DL
7171
7172 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7173
79214ddf 7174*** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
a933dad1
DL
7175
7176*** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7177cited text to hide is now customizable.
7178
7179 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7180
7181*** Boring headers can be hidden.
7182
7183 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7184
7185*** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7186
7187*** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7188
7189The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7190in greater detail.
7191\f
7192* Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7193
7194** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7195second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7196asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7197exists.
7198
7199** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7200as well as lists.
7201
7202** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7203of a given keymap.
7204
7205** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7206given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7207keymap or nil.
7208
7209** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7210an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7211name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7212menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7213equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7214alias.
7215\f
7216* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7217
7218** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7219
7220Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7221This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7222was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7223far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7224pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7225
7226For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7227you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7228`http://www.vtw.org/'.
7229
7230** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7231
7232The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7233do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7234It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7235much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7236chapter of the manual for details.
7237
7238However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7239customization variables take effect.
7240
7241** Marking with the mouse.
7242
7243When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7244highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7245using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7246
7247** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7248
7249*** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7250
7251*** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7252to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7253
7254*** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7255in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7256you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7257application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7258applications, these problems are significant.
7259
7260If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7261likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7262However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7263will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7264other DOS application as a subprocess.
7265
7266Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7267You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7268
7269If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7270subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7271have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7272Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7273separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7274Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7275
7276** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7277
7278This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7279which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7280minibuffer contains.
7281
7282** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7283
7284The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7285It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7286It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7287affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7288
7289The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7290it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7291and also serves as the default for the displayed title
7292when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
7293
7294** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
7295enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
7296
7297** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
7298F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
7299Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
7300
7301If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
7302menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
7303something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
7304the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
7305
7306 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
7307
7308** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
7309to replace the characters it "deletes".
7310
7311** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
7312
7313** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
7314a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
7315select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
7316It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
7317immediately after the selected one.
7318
7319This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
7320made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
7321
7322** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
7323
7324Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
7325directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
7326If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
7327Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
7328recover-session.
7329
7330You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
7331auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
7332will not work.
7333
7334Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
7335normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
7336this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
7337bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
7338now that the bug is fixed.
7339
7340** Changes to Version Control (VC)
7341
7342There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
7343when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
7344Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
7345which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
7346
7347If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
7348telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
7349VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
7350the link is visited and a warning displayed.
7351
7352** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
7353Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
7354is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
7355
7356There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
7357Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
7358enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
7359The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
7360remain normal.
7361
7362** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
7363header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
7364
7365Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
7366known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
7367offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
7368Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
7369
7370Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
7371of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
7372a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
7373name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
7374documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
7375`mail-directory-stream'.)
7376
7377** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
7378skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
7379characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
7380with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
7381
7382Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
7383- to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
7384wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
7385
7386The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
7387less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
7388headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
7389Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
7390Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
7391fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
7392to a limitation in font-lock).
7393
7394External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
7395
7396** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
7397buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
7398buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
7399this example:
7400
7401 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
7402 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
7403
7404** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7405
7406*** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
7407
7408*** Font Lock mode is now supported.
7409
7410*** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
7411
7412*** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
7413entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
7414will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
7415isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
7416(bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
7417The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
7418
7419*** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
7420does the same job.
7421
7422*** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
7423"Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
7424
7425*** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
7426text.
7427
7428** Font Lock mode
7429
7430*** Global Font Lock mode
7431
7432Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
7433new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
7434font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
7435turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
7436on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
7437
7438For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
7439
7440 (global-font-lock-mode t)
7441
7442in your ~/.emacs.
7443
7444*** Local Refontification
7445
7446In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
7447However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
7448those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
7449command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
7450
7451In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
7452(The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
7453current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
7454above and below point.
7455
7456With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
7457
7458** Follow mode
7459
7460Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
7461buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
7462side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
7463they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
7464split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
7465follow-mode.
7466
7467M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
7468
7469To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
7470command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
7471
7472** hide-show changes.
7473
7474The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
7475to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
7476normal hooks.
7477
7478** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
7479The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
7480
7481** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
7482recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
7483those that begin a function, record, or macro.
7484
7485** MSDOS Changes
7486
7487*** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
7488Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
7489
7490*** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
7491and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
7492
7493*** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
7494
7495*** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
7496pressing both mouse buttons.
7497
7498*** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
7499restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
79214ddf 7500are:
a933dad1
DL
7501
7502**** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
7503now works.
7504
7505**** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
7506
7507**** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
7508implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
7509
7510**** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
7511
7512**** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
7513
7514**** `M-x recover-session' works.
7515
7516**** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
7517
7518**** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
7519\f
7520* Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
7521
7522** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
7523tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
7524remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
7525this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
7526behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
7527
7528** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
7529
7530The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
7531not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
7532need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
7533be different.
7534
7535It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
7536than `system-type'.
7537
7538See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
7539
7540** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
7541now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
7542
7543** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
7544that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
7545
7546** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
7547no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
7548reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
7549
7550The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
7551to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
7552like this:
7553
7554 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7555
7556SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
7557It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
7558becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
7559
7560REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
7561seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
7562means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
7563
7564*** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
7565up if too much time passes.
7566
7567 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
7568
7569This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
7570If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
7571of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
7572form in BODY.
7573
7574*** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
7575a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
7576call looks like this:
7577
7578 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7579
7580SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
7581runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
7582timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
7583ARGS.
7584
7585Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
7586command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
7587command.
7588
7589REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
7590time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
7591does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
7592each time Emacs becomes idle.
7593
7594If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
7595idle for SECS seconds.
7596
7597*** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
7598all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
7599programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
7600instead.
7601
7602*** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
7603there is no answer within a certain time.
7604
7605 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
7606
7607asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
7608within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
7609Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
7610
7611** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
7612arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
7613meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
7614arguments in between are ignored.
7615
7616This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
7617the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
7618
7619** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
7620/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
7621/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
7622site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
7623version.
7624
7625It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
7626version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
7627for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
7628has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
7629and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
7630problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
7631
7632** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
7633.abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
7634systems with limited file name syntax.
7635
7636Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
7637convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
7638for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
7639completions.el:
7640
7641(defvar save-completions-file-name
7642 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
7643 "*The filename to save completions to.")
7644
7645This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
7646depends on the operating system, because the definition of
7647convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
7648Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
7649MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
7650
7651** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
7652rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
7653minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
7654
7655** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
7656marker from its buffer position.
7657
7658** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
7659Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
7660The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
7661
7662** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
7663that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
7664condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
7665of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
7666matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
7667regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
7668
7669This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
7670errors that happen often during editing.
7671
7672** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
7673into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
7674puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
7675
7676** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
7677now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
7678
7679** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
7680a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
7681name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
7682to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
7683and not get-buffer-window.
7684
7685** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
7686calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
7687being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
7688
7689If you use this feature, you should set the variable
7690buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
7691property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
7692non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
7693are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
7694property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
7695over and over for the same text.
7696
7697** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
7698
7699*** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
7700in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
7701
7702;; @(#) HEADER: text
7703;; $HEADER: text $
7704
7705in addition to the normal
7706
7707;; HEADER: text
7708
7709*** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
7710checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
7711lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
7712\f
7713* For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7714
7715----------------------------------------------------------------------
7716Copyright information:
7717
404fa7d6 7718Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
a933dad1
DL
7719
7720 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7721 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7722 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7723 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7724
7725 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7726 of this document, or of portions of it,
7727 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7728 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7729\f
7730Local variables:
7731mode: outline
7732paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
7733end: