1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
14 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
15 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option to list them.
17 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
19 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
21 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
22 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
24 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
25 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
26 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
27 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
29 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
30 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
31 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
32 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
34 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
35 on the display using several methods
37 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
38 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
39 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
41 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
42 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
44 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
46 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
47 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
49 ** The new command `clone-buffer-indirectly' can be used to create
50 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
51 command `clone-buffer-indirectly-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
52 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
54 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
55 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
56 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
58 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
59 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
61 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
62 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
65 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
66 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
69 ** New X resources recognized
71 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
72 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
73 is useful for debugging X problems.
77 emacs.synchronous: true
79 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
80 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
81 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
82 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
83 visual class names are
92 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
93 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
96 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
97 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
98 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
103 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
105 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
106 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
107 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
108 resource values are `true' or `on'.
112 emacs.privateColormap: true
114 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
115 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
116 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
118 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
119 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
120 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
123 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
125 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
126 all frames except the selected one.
128 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
129 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
131 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
132 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X either in the echo
133 area or with tooltips.
135 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
136 read mail from the menu etc.
138 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
139 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
141 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
143 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
147 -------------------------
154 ** Changes in Outline mode.
156 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
157 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
158 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
160 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
161 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
163 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
164 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
165 several other special buffers.
167 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
168 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
171 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
172 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
174 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
175 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
176 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
178 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
179 is running in batch mode. For example,
181 (message "%s" (read t))
183 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
186 ** Faces and frame parameters.
188 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
189 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
190 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
191 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
192 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
193 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
194 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
196 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
197 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
198 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
199 `default' face and vice versa.
203 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
204 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
205 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
207 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
209 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
210 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
211 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
212 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
214 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
215 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
216 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
218 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
221 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
223 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
224 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
225 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
226 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
229 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
231 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
232 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
233 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
234 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
237 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
238 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
239 under Lisp changes, below.
241 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
243 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
244 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
247 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
248 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
249 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
250 customizing face `fringe'.
252 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
253 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
257 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
258 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
260 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
262 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
263 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
264 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
265 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
266 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
269 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
270 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
271 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
272 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
273 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
274 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
276 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
277 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
278 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
279 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
280 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
281 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
283 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
284 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
285 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
286 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
287 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
289 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
291 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
292 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
293 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
295 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
297 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
298 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
299 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
300 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
301 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
306 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
307 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
311 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
312 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
313 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
316 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
318 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
319 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
320 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
323 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
324 have to do anything to activate it.
326 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
328 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
329 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
330 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
331 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
333 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
335 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
337 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
339 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
342 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
345 ** Hscrolling in C code.
347 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
348 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
353 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
354 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
356 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
358 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
359 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
360 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
361 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
362 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
364 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
366 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
369 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
370 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
372 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
374 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
375 toggles the read-only status.
377 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
379 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
381 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
382 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
385 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
387 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
388 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
389 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
390 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
391 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
392 attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
396 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
397 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
398 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
399 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
400 to enable sound support.
402 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
403 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
404 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
405 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
406 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
407 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
409 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
411 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
413 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
414 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
415 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
417 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
418 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
420 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
421 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
422 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
424 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
426 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
427 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
428 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
429 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
431 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
432 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
433 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
434 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
436 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
437 notably at the end of lines.
439 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
440 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
442 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
444 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
445 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
446 after each match to get the replacement text.
448 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `E' that lets you
449 edit the replacement string.
451 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', let's
452 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
453 lisp-complete-symbol.
455 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
457 If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
458 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
459 on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
460 by setting the following variable:
462 - User option: max-mini-window-height
464 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
465 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
466 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
470 ** Changes to hideshow.el
472 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
473 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
475 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
477 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
478 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
479 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
480 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
481 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
482 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
484 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
485 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
486 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
487 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
489 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
491 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
492 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
493 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
494 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
495 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
497 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
498 something like this in your .emacs.
500 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
502 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
504 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
506 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
507 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
508 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
510 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
511 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
513 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
514 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
516 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
517 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
518 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
521 ** Changes in Font Lock
523 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
524 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
527 ** Comint (subshell) changes
529 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
530 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
532 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
533 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
534 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
536 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
537 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
538 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
540 ** Changes to Rmail mode
542 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
543 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
544 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
545 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
546 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
549 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
550 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
551 regexp matching your mail addresses.
553 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
554 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
555 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
556 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
557 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
559 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
562 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
563 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
566 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
567 in which folder to put messages automatically.
569 ** Changes to TeX mode
571 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
574 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
576 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
577 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
578 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
579 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
580 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
581 can be edited from that buffer.
583 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
584 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
585 `A' to use all marked entries).
587 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
588 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
590 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
591 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
592 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
595 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
596 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
597 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
598 in column 1 are always made leaves.
600 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
601 has the following new features:
603 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
604 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
605 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
606 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
608 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
609 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
610 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
611 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
612 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
617 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
618 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
619 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
621 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
622 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
623 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
624 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
628 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
629 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
630 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
632 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
633 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
636 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
637 between custom options. Example:
639 (defcustom default-input-method nil
640 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
641 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
642 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
644 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
645 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
647 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
648 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
649 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
651 ** New features in evaluation commands
653 The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
654 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
655 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
656 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
657 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
661 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
662 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
663 is, delete only empty directories.
665 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
666 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
667 copy directories recursively.
669 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
670 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
671 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
673 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
674 use the -f option when sending mail.
678 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
679 current user setups (although it's believed that these
680 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
681 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
682 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
683 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
686 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
687 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
688 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
689 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
690 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
691 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
692 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
693 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
695 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
696 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
697 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
698 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
701 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
702 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
703 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
704 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
705 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
706 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
707 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
708 function documentation for more info.
710 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
711 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
712 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
713 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
714 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
715 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
716 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
717 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
719 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
721 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
722 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
724 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
725 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
726 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
727 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
728 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
731 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
732 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
733 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
736 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
737 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
738 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
739 chapter about this in the manual.
741 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
742 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
743 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
744 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
745 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
747 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
748 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
749 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
751 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
752 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
754 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
755 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
756 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
759 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
760 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
761 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
762 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
765 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
766 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
767 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
770 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
771 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
772 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
773 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
776 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
777 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
778 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
779 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
782 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
783 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
784 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
786 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
788 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
789 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
790 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
791 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
793 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
794 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
795 the column specified by comment-column.
797 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
798 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
799 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
800 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
801 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
802 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
804 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
805 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
808 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
810 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
811 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
812 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
813 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
816 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
818 ** Makefile mode changes
820 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
822 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
823 Fontlock mode is active.
827 ** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
828 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
829 that started the search.
831 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
832 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
834 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
836 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
837 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
838 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
839 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
840 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
841 `secondary-selection'.
843 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
844 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
845 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
846 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
847 usual snappy response.
849 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
850 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
851 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
852 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
854 ** Changes in sort.el
856 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
857 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
858 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
861 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
863 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
864 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
865 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
867 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
868 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
870 ** Shell script mode changes.
872 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
873 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
874 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
878 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
880 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
881 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
882 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
883 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
884 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
886 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
887 declarations when given the --declarations option.
889 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
890 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
892 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
895 *** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
897 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
899 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
902 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
903 variables are tagged.
905 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
907 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
910 ** Changes in etags.el
912 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
913 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
914 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
916 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
917 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
919 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
920 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
921 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
922 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
924 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
926 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
927 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
929 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
931 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
932 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
933 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
935 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
936 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
938 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
939 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
941 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
942 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
943 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
945 ** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
946 These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
947 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
948 currently no specific input method support for them.
950 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sqeuence-nos' to
951 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
952 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
954 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
956 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
958 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
959 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
960 expression from that list, are not checked.
962 ** New modes and packages
964 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
965 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
966 separate Texinfo file.
968 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine
969 or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
970 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS.
971 It comes with log-view-mode to view RCS and SCCS logs and log-edit-mode
972 used to enter checkin log messages.
974 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
975 without invoking external programs.
977 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
978 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
979 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
980 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
981 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
983 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
984 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
986 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
987 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
989 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
990 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
991 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
992 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
993 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
996 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
997 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
998 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
999 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1001 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1002 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1003 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1005 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1008 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1010 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1012 ; comment (until end of line)
1016 $A default non-terminal
1017 $"C" default terminal
1018 $?C? default special
1019 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1020 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1021 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1022 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1023 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1024 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1025 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1026 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1027 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1028 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1029 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1030 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1031 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1032 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1033 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1035 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1037 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1038 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1039 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1040 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1041 equal signs of assignments.
1043 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1044 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1046 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1047 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1048 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1049 customize the package.
1051 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1052 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1053 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1054 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1055 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1056 which answers different needs.
1058 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1059 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1060 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1061 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1062 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1065 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1066 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1068 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1070 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1072 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1074 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1077 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1080 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1082 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1084 *** whitespace.el ???
1086 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1087 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1088 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1089 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1090 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1091 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1092 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1094 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1096 Here is an example of columns:
1099 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1100 porcupine strawberry airplane
1102 Doing the following settings:
1104 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1105 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1106 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1107 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1110 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1112 M-x delimit-columns-region
1116 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1117 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1118 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1120 delim-col has the following options:
1122 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1125 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1126 between each column.
1128 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1131 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1134 delim-col has the following commands:
1136 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1137 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1139 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1140 were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
1141 is displayed in the "Files" menu.
1143 The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
1145 To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
1147 To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
1148 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
1150 To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
1151 M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
1153 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1156 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1157 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1158 specific to Message mode.
1160 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1161 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1162 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1164 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1165 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1166 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1168 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1169 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1171 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1173 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1174 minibuffer with completion.
1176 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1177 with the diary features.
1179 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1180 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1182 ** Withdrawn packages
1184 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1185 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1187 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1189 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1192 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1193 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1196 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1198 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1199 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1200 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1201 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1204 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1205 that offset in the file before writing.
1207 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1210 ** The function `add-minor-mode' simplifies the definition of minor
1213 - Function: add-minor-mode TOGGLE NAME &optional KEYMAP AFTER TOGGLE-FUN
1215 Register a new minor mode.
1217 TOGGLE is a symbol which is the name of a buffer-local variable that
1218 is toggled on or off to say whether the minor mode is active or not.
1220 NAME specifies what will appear in the mode line when the minor mode
1221 is active. NAME should be either a string starting with a space, or a
1222 symbol whose value is such a string.
1224 Optional KEYMAP is the keymap for the minor mode that will be added
1225 to `minor-mode-map-alist'.
1227 Optional AFTER specifies that TOGGLE should be added after AFTER
1228 in `minor-mode-alist'.
1230 Optional TOGGLE-FUN is there for compatiblity with other Emacssen.
1231 It is currently not used.
1233 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1234 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1235 from which the command was issued.
1237 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1238 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1239 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1240 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1243 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1244 to `window-buffer-height'.
1246 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1248 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1249 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1250 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1252 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1255 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1256 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1258 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1259 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1260 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1262 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1263 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1264 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1265 is currently displayed in some window.
1267 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1268 argument function's results.
1270 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1271 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1273 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1274 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1276 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1277 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1279 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1280 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1283 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1284 nil don't display a cursor
1285 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1286 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1287 others display a box cursor.
1289 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1290 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1291 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1292 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1294 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1295 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1296 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1297 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1301 (string-to-syntax "()")
1304 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1307 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1308 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1315 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1320 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1325 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1332 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1333 the given property to obtain a a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1336 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1337 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1338 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1339 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1342 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1344 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1345 for a regexp in a string.
1347 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1348 `mouse-position-function'.
1350 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1351 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1353 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1354 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1357 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1360 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1361 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1364 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1365 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1366 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1367 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1371 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1372 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1375 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1376 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1377 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1378 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1381 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1382 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1383 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1384 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1387 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1388 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1389 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1392 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1393 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1396 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1398 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1399 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1400 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1404 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1405 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1408 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1409 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1412 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1413 instead of being optional.
1416 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1417 modify read-only text.
1420 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1422 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1423 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1424 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1425 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1426 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1428 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1429 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1430 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1431 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1432 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1433 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1434 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1437 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1438 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1439 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1443 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1444 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1447 ** New function `propertize'
1449 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1450 strings with text properties.
1452 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1454 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1455 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1456 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1457 specified value of that property. Example:
1459 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1462 ** push and pop macros.
1464 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1465 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1466 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1468 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1469 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1470 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1472 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1474 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1475 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1477 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1478 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1479 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1480 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1482 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1483 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1484 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1485 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1488 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1489 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1491 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1492 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1493 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1494 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1495 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1497 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1499 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1500 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1501 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1502 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1503 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1504 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1505 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1506 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1507 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1508 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1509 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1510 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1511 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1512 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1513 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1516 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1518 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1520 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1522 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1523 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1527 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1528 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1529 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1533 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1534 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1536 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1538 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1539 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1540 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1541 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1542 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1544 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1546 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1547 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1548 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1552 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
1553 Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
1554 their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
1555 hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1557 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1559 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1561 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1563 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1565 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1567 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1570 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1572 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1574 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1576 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1578 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1580 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1582 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1584 Returns the size of TABLE.
1586 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1588 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1590 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1592 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1594 - Function: clrhash TABLE
1598 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1600 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1603 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
1605 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1606 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1608 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1610 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1612 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1614 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1615 arguments KEY and VALUE.
1617 - Function: sxhash OBJ
1619 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1621 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1623 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1624 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
1625 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
1626 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1627 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1629 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1631 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1632 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1633 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1635 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1636 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1638 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1639 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1641 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1642 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1644 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
1645 'case-fold-string-hash))
1647 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1650 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1652 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1653 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1654 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1657 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1659 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1660 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1663 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
1664 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
1665 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
1666 is too short to reach that column.
1669 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
1670 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
1671 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
1672 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
1674 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
1675 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
1676 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
1679 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
1680 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
1683 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
1684 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
1687 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
1688 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
1689 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
1690 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
1691 temporary-file-directory instead.
1694 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
1695 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
1696 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
1697 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
1700 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
1701 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
1704 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
1706 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
1707 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
1708 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
1711 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
1713 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
1714 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
1715 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
1716 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
1717 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
1718 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
1720 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
1721 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
1722 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
1723 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
1726 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
1728 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
1729 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
1730 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
1733 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
1734 string where arguments appear in the result string.
1738 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
1740 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
1741 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
1744 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
1747 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
1749 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
1750 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
1753 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
1755 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
1756 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
1762 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
1763 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
1765 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
1766 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
1767 to enable sound support.
1769 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
1770 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
1771 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
1772 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
1773 sound to play, before playing the sound.
1775 The following sound properties are supported:
1779 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
1780 searched relative to `data-directory'.
1784 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
1785 may be present, but not both.
1789 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
1790 0..1. This property is optional.
1792 Other properties are ignored.
1794 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
1796 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
1799 ** Changes to garbage collection
1801 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
1802 of live and free strings.
1804 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
1805 strings that have been consed so far.
1808 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
1811 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
1813 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
1814 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
1815 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
1816 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
1819 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
1821 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1822 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1823 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1824 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1826 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
1827 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
1829 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
1830 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
1831 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
1832 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
1833 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
1834 just display it black instead.
1836 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
1839 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
1843 ** New face implementation.
1845 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
1846 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
1851 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
1853 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
1855 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
1856 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
1858 3. Font height in 1/10pt
1860 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
1862 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
1864 6. Foreground color.
1866 7. Background color.
1868 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
1870 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
1872 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
1874 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
1876 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
1879 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
1880 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
1882 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
1883 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
1884 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
1885 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
1886 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
1887 attributes mentioned above.
1889 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
1890 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
1893 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
1894 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
1900 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
1901 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
1902 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
1903 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
1904 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
1905 results in a fully-specified face.
1908 *** Face realization.
1910 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
1911 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
1912 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
1913 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
1914 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
1915 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
1917 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
1918 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
1919 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
1920 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
1922 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
1923 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
1924 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
1925 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
1926 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
1928 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
1929 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
1930 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
1931 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
1932 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
1935 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
1936 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
1937 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
1938 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
1941 **** Clearing face caches.
1943 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
1944 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
1950 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
1951 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
1952 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
1954 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1955 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1956 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1957 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1958 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1960 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1961 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1962 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1964 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1966 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1967 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1968 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1969 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1970 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1971 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1972 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1974 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1975 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1981 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1982 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1985 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
1986 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
1987 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1988 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1989 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1992 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1994 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1997 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1999 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2001 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2002 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2003 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2005 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2006 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2007 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2008 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2009 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2010 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2011 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2012 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2013 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2014 of the face font sort order.
2016 - Function: x-font-family-list
2018 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2019 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2020 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2021 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2023 - Variable: font-list-limit
2025 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2026 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2027 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2030 *** Setting face attributes.
2032 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2033 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2034 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2037 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2038 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2040 The following attributes are recognized:
2044 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2045 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2046 and `?' are allowed.
2050 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2051 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2052 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2053 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2057 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2062 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2063 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2064 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2068 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2069 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2072 `:foreground', `:background'
2074 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2078 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2079 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2080 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2085 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2086 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2087 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2092 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2093 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2094 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2095 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2099 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2100 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2101 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2102 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2103 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2104 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2105 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2106 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2107 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2108 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2109 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2110 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2111 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2112 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2113 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2114 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2119 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2120 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2124 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2125 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2126 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2127 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2128 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2129 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2131 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2132 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2136 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2137 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2138 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2141 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2142 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2143 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2145 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2148 *** Face attributes and X resources
2150 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2153 Face attribute X resource class
2154 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2155 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2156 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2157 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2158 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2159 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2160 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2161 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2162 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2163 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2164 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2165 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2166 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2167 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2168 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2169 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2170 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2171 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2172 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2173 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2176 *** Text property `face'.
2178 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2179 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2180 specification can be
2182 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2184 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2185 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2186 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2187 for face attribute names.
2189 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2190 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2191 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2194 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2196 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2197 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2198 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2199 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2200 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2201 used to clear the mapping table.
2203 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2205 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2206 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2207 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2208 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2209 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2210 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2211 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2212 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2213 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2214 modify their color-related behavior.
2216 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2219 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2221 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2222 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2223 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2224 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2225 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2226 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2227 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2228 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2229 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2232 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2234 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2236 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2237 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2238 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2240 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2242 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2243 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2246 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2247 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2248 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2249 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2250 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2251 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2252 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2255 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2256 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2257 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2259 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2261 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
2263 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2264 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2265 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2266 constrained position if that is is different.
2268 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2269 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2270 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2271 constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
2272 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2273 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2276 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2277 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2278 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2279 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2280 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2282 - Function: erase-field &optional POS
2284 Erases the field surrounding POS.
2285 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2286 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2288 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2290 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2291 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2292 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2293 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
2294 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2296 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2298 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2299 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2300 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2301 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
2302 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2304 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2306 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2307 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2308 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2310 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2312 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2313 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2314 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2319 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2320 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2321 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2322 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2324 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2325 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2326 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2327 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2330 IMAGE is an image specification.
2332 *** Image specifications
2334 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2335 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2336 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2337 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2338 described below are ignored.
2340 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2344 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2345 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2346 to use for its ascent.
2348 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2349 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2351 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2352 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2353 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2354 overlays that apply to the image.
2358 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2359 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2363 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2368 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2369 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2370 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2371 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2373 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2375 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2376 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2377 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2378 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2379 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2380 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2381 background of the image.
2385 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2386 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2387 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2388 may be present in the image specification.
2392 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2393 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2394 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2395 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2397 *** Supported image types
2399 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2401 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2402 properties supported are
2406 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2407 is the frame's foreground.
2411 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2412 the frame's background color.
2414 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2415 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2416 instead of a `:file' property.
2420 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2424 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2430 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2431 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2433 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2435 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2438 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2439 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2442 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2444 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2445 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2446 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2447 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2449 Additional image properties supported are:
2451 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2453 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2454 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2457 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2458 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2460 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2461 to display compressed images.
2463 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2465 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2466 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2469 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2471 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2472 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2475 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2477 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2478 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2481 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2483 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2484 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2486 Additional image properties supported are:
2490 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2491 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2493 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2494 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2495 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2498 (defun show-anim (file max)
2499 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2500 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2502 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2505 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2508 (goto-char (point-min))
2509 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2510 (insert-image img "x"))
2511 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2513 **** PNG, image type `png'
2515 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2516 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2519 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2521 Additional image properties supported are:
2525 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2526 integer. This is a required property.
2530 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2531 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2535 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2536 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2537 files. This is an required property.
2539 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2544 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2545 which are supported in the current configuration.
2547 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2548 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2549 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2550 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
2551 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
2553 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2555 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2556 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2557 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2558 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2559 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2565 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2568 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2569 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2570 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2571 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2572 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2573 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2574 of the display margins.
2576 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2577 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2578 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2579 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2585 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2586 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2587 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2588 that have a `help-echo' property.
2590 The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
2591 items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
2592 If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
2593 evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
2594 tool-bar item is used.
2596 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
2597 help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
2598 help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
2601 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
2603 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
2604 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
2606 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
2607 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
2608 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
2609 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
2612 (global-set-key [A-down]
2615 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2616 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
2617 (global-set-key [A-up]
2620 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2621 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
2624 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
2626 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
2627 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
2628 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
2629 is called with one argument, POS.
2631 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
2632 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
2633 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
2634 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
2635 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
2638 ** Tool bar support.
2640 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
2641 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
2642 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
2643 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
2644 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
2645 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
2647 *** Tool bar item definitions
2649 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
2650 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
2651 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
2653 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
2654 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
2655 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
2656 property (see below).
2658 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
2659 binding are currently ignored.
2661 The following properties are recognized:
2665 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
2670 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
2674 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
2675 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
2676 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
2678 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
2680 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
2681 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
2685 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
2686 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
2687 meaning of each of the four elements:
2689 Index Use when item is
2690 ----------------------------------------
2691 0 enabled and selected
2692 1 enabled and deselected
2693 2 disabled and selected
2694 3 disabled and deselected
2696 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
2697 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
2699 `:help HELP-STRING'.
2701 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
2702 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
2704 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
2706 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
2707 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
2708 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
2710 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
2711 raised when the mouse moves over them.
2713 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
2714 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
2715 pixels. Default is 1.
2717 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
2718 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
2720 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
2722 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
2725 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
2726 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
2727 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
2729 is the original tool bar item definition, then
2731 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
2733 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
2736 ** Mode line changes.
2739 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
2741 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
2742 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
2743 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
2745 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
2746 a `local-map' text property.
2748 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
2749 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
2751 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
2752 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
2753 `local-map' property.
2755 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
2756 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
2759 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
2760 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
2763 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
2764 variable mode-line-format to nil.
2767 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
2769 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
2770 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
2771 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
2772 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
2775 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
2778 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
2779 position in the header-line.
2782 ** Text property `display'
2784 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
2785 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
2786 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
2787 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
2789 *** Variable width and height spaces
2791 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
2792 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
2793 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
2794 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
2795 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
2796 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
2797 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
2799 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
2800 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
2801 properties described below.
2803 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
2804 characters having the `display' property.
2808 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
2809 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
2811 - :relative-width FACTOR
2813 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
2814 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
2815 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
2816 width of that character by FACTOR.
2820 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
2821 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
2823 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
2827 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
2830 - :relative-height FACTOR
2832 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
2833 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
2837 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
2838 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
2839 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
2842 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
2846 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
2847 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
2848 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
2849 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
2850 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
2851 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
2852 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
2853 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
2854 as display specification.
2856 *** Other display properties
2858 - :space-width FACTOR
2860 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
2861 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
2866 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
2868 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
2869 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
2870 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
2871 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
2872 a font is available counts as a step.
2874 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
2875 as tall as the frame's default font.
2877 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
2878 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
2880 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
2881 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
2885 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
2886 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
2887 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
2888 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
2889 `:height' subproperty.
2891 *** Conditional display properties
2893 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
2894 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
2895 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
2896 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
2897 the text having the `display' property.
2899 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
2903 ** New menu separator types.
2905 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
2906 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
2907 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
2908 to specify other menu separator types.
2910 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
2912 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
2915 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
2917 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
2919 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
2921 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
2923 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
2925 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2927 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
2929 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2931 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
2933 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
2934 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
2936 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
2938 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
2940 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
2942 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
2944 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
2946 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
2948 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
2950 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2952 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
2954 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
2956 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
2958 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2960 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
2962 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
2964 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
2965 the corresponding single-line separators.
2968 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
2970 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
2971 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
2972 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
2973 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
2974 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
2975 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
2976 default foreground is black.
2978 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
2979 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
2980 `ScrollBarBackground').
2982 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
2983 settings for scroll bar colors.
2986 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
2987 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
2990 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
2991 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
2992 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
2993 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
2994 the original window start.
2997 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
2998 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
2999 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3002 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3004 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3005 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3006 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3007 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3009 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3010 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3012 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3014 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3015 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3016 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3017 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3018 temporarily to nil, for example
3020 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3021 (enlarge-window 10))
3023 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3024 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3026 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3027 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3028 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3029 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3030 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3031 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3033 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3035 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3036 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3038 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3040 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3042 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3043 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3044 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3046 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3047 is the one that is used.
3049 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3050 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3051 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3052 separate from the command's regular output.
3053 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3054 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3055 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3058 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3059 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3060 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3061 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3063 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3064 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3065 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3066 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3068 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3069 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3070 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3071 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3073 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3074 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3075 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3076 they never ignore case.
3078 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3079 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3080 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3081 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3082 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3083 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3084 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3086 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3087 the same format that was used in the file before.
3089 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3090 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3092 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3093 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3094 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3096 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3097 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3098 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3099 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3100 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3101 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3102 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3104 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3105 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3106 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3107 format. You can now customize these variables.
3109 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3110 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3111 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3112 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3114 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3115 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3116 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3118 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3119 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3120 doesn't have any effect.
3122 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3125 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3126 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3127 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3129 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3130 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3131 `auto-show-mode' command.
3133 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3134 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3135 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3136 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3137 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3139 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3140 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3142 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3143 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3144 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3146 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3147 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3148 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3149 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3151 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3153 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3154 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3155 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3156 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3157 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3159 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3160 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3162 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3163 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3164 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3165 `?' on other systems.
3167 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3168 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3171 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3172 current codepage when it starts.
3176 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3177 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3178 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3179 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3180 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3181 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3185 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3186 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3188 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3189 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3190 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3191 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3192 buffer-file-coding-system.
3194 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3195 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3198 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3199 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3200 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3201 list of possible coding systems.
3205 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3206 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3207 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3208 docstring for details.
3210 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3211 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3212 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3213 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3214 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3216 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3217 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3219 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3220 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3222 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3223 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3224 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3225 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3228 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3229 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3231 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3232 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3233 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3234 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3236 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3237 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3238 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3239 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3240 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3242 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3244 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3246 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3247 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3249 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3251 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3252 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3253 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3254 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3255 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3259 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3260 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3261 Gnus manual for the full story.
3263 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3264 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3265 group, which is created automatically.
3267 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3270 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3272 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3273 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3275 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3278 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3280 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3281 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3283 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3285 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3286 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3288 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3289 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3291 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3292 control over simplification.
3294 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3296 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3299 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3301 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3303 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3304 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3305 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3307 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3308 `a' forces normal posting method.
3310 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3313 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3316 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3317 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3319 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3322 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3324 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3326 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3327 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3329 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3330 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3332 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3334 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3337 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3338 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3340 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3341 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3343 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3345 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3347 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3349 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3351 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3352 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3353 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3355 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3356 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3357 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3358 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3359 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3361 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3362 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3363 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3364 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3366 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3367 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3368 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3371 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3373 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3374 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3376 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3377 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3378 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3379 removed from the label.
3381 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3382 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3384 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3385 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3387 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3388 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3391 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3393 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3395 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3396 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3398 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3399 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3400 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3402 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3403 changes with a special face.
3405 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3406 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3407 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3409 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3411 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3412 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3413 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3414 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3415 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3417 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3418 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3419 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3421 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3422 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3423 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3424 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3425 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3426 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3427 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3428 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3429 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3431 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3432 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3433 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3434 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3435 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3438 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3439 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3440 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3441 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3442 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3443 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3445 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3446 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3447 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3448 was not documented clearly before.
3450 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3451 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3453 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3455 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3456 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3457 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3458 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3460 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3461 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3462 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3464 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3466 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3467 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3469 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3470 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3473 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3474 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3475 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3476 file names and attributes are returned.
3478 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3479 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3480 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3481 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3484 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3485 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3487 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3489 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3490 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3491 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3494 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3495 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3498 The new function process-running-child-p
3499 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3500 terminal to its own child process.
3502 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3503 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3504 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3505 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3507 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3508 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3510 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3511 :included is an alias for :visible.
3513 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3514 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3515 to move or copy menu entries.
3517 ** Multibyte editing changes
3519 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3520 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3521 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3522 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3523 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3524 (setq char (sref str idx)
3525 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3526 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3528 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3529 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3530 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3532 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3533 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3534 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3536 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3538 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3539 across the boundary.
3541 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3542 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3543 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3544 contains 8-bit characters.
3545 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3546 contains invalid characters.
3548 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3549 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3550 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3551 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3554 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3555 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3556 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3557 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3559 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3560 compose Thai characters in a string.
3562 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3563 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3564 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
3565 menus should always use the third argument.
3567 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
3568 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
3569 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
3570 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
3572 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
3573 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
3574 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
3575 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
3577 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
3578 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
3579 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
3582 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
3584 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
3585 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
3586 requested feature cannot be loaded.
3588 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
3589 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
3590 means to clear out that attribute.
3592 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
3593 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
3595 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
3596 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
3597 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
3598 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
3600 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
3601 the gap of the current buffer.
3603 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
3604 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
3607 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
3608 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
3609 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
3610 it back in after any modifications have been made.
3612 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
3614 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
3615 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
3616 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
3617 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
3618 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
3620 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
3621 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
3622 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
3623 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
3624 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
3626 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
3627 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
3628 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
3630 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
3631 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
3632 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
3633 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
3634 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
3637 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
3638 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
3639 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
3640 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
3642 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
3644 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
3645 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
3646 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
3647 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
3649 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
3650 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
3651 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
3652 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
3653 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
3654 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
3655 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
3658 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
3661 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
3662 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
3663 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
3664 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
3665 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
3667 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
3668 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
3669 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
3670 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
3672 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
3673 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
3674 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
3675 something that most users not do.
3677 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
3678 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
3679 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
3682 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
3685 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
3686 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
3687 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
3688 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
3691 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
3692 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
3693 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
3694 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
3695 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
3698 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
3699 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
3700 to be confused by TeX commands.
3702 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
3703 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
3704 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
3705 of various alternative replacements and actions.
3707 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
3708 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
3709 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
3710 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
3711 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
3713 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
3714 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
3716 ** Changes in input method usage.
3718 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
3719 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
3722 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
3724 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
3725 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
3727 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
3728 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
3730 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
3732 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
3734 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
3735 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
3737 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
3738 given in the following case:
3739 o When you are using a complex input method.
3740 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
3742 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
3743 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
3744 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
3745 setting it to t is helpful.
3747 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
3749 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
3751 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
3752 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
3753 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
3754 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
3757 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
3758 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
3759 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
3762 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
3764 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
3766 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
3767 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
3769 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
3770 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
3771 its owner and group.
3773 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
3774 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
3776 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
3777 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
3779 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
3780 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
3781 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
3782 by the left edge of the rectangle.
3784 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
3785 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
3786 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
3787 for writing keyboard macros.
3789 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
3790 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
3791 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
3792 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
3793 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
3796 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
3798 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
3799 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
3802 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
3803 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
3804 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
3805 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
3807 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
3808 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
3809 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
3811 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
3812 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
3813 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
3814 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
3816 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
3817 failure if the command produces no output.
3819 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
3820 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
3823 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
3824 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
3825 function and variable names.
3827 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
3828 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
3829 file-coding-system-alist.
3831 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
3832 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
3833 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
3834 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
3835 according to the current fontset.
3837 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
3839 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
3840 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
3841 nonascii-insert-offset.
3843 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
3844 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
3845 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
3846 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
3848 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
3849 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
3851 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
3852 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
3854 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
3855 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
3858 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
3859 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
3861 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
3862 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
3863 all variables that have documentation.
3865 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
3866 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
3867 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
3868 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
3869 it should show; the default is 20.
3871 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
3872 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
3875 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
3876 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
3877 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
3878 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
3879 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
3880 Newly added options are included as well.
3882 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
3883 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
3884 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
3886 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
3889 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
3890 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
3892 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
3893 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
3896 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
3897 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
3900 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
3901 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
3902 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
3903 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
3906 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
3908 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
3909 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
3910 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
3912 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
3913 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
3914 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
3919 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
3920 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
3922 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
3923 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
3925 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
3926 read and post multi-lingual articles.
3928 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
3929 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
3930 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
3931 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
3932 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
3933 made invisible again.
3935 ** Mail reading and sending changes
3937 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
3938 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
3939 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
3942 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
3943 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
3944 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
3945 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
3946 rmail-default-body-file.
3948 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
3949 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
3950 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
3952 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
3953 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
3954 is evaluated to insert the signature.
3956 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
3957 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
3958 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
3959 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
3960 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
3961 especially interested in trying feedmail.
3963 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
3964 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
3965 provided by feedmail are:
3967 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
3968 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
3969 there is also a queue for draft messages
3971 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
3972 be prompted for confirmation
3974 **** does smart filling of address headers
3976 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
3977 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
3978 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
3980 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
3981 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
3982 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
3983 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
3987 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
3988 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
3990 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
3991 run Dired on the directory name at point.
3993 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
3994 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
3995 for a specified regexp.
3999 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4002 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4003 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4006 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4007 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4008 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4009 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4011 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4012 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4013 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4014 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4015 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4017 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4018 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4019 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4020 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4021 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4023 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4024 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4025 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4026 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4028 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4029 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4030 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4032 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4033 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4034 session to resolve them.
4036 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4037 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4038 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4041 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4042 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4043 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4044 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4045 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4046 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4049 ** Changes in Font Lock
4051 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4052 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4053 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4054 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4055 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4057 ** Frame name display changes
4059 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4060 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4061 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4062 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4064 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4065 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4068 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4070 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4071 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4072 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4074 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4076 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4077 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4078 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4080 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4081 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4084 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4085 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4086 previously sent input.
4088 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4089 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4090 as the search string.
4092 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4093 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4097 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4098 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4099 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4102 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4103 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4104 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4105 style is still the default however.
4107 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4109 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4110 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4111 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4113 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4114 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4116 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4117 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4119 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4120 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4122 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4123 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4125 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4126 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4127 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4128 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4130 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4132 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4133 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4134 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4136 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4137 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4138 expanding dynamically.
4140 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4141 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4143 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4144 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4145 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4146 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4148 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4150 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4152 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4153 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4154 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4155 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4156 against the first word in the title.
4158 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4159 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4160 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4161 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4162 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4163 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4165 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4166 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4167 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4168 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4170 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4172 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4173 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4174 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4175 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4176 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4177 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4179 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4180 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4182 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4183 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4184 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4186 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4187 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4191 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4192 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4193 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4195 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4196 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4197 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4198 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4201 o URLs are automatically skipped
4202 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4204 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4206 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4208 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4209 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4210 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4211 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4213 *** New recursive parser.
4215 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4216 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4217 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4219 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4221 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4222 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4223 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4225 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4227 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4229 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4231 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4233 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4235 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4236 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4238 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4240 *** References to external documents.
4242 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4243 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4244 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4245 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4246 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4247 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4248 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4250 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4252 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4253 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4255 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4256 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4258 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4260 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4261 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4263 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4265 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4266 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4267 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4268 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4269 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4270 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4273 *** Support for the varioref package
4275 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4279 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4280 and citations are created. These hooks are
4281 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4282 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4284 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4286 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4287 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4289 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4291 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4292 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4295 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4297 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4298 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4299 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4300 directories that contain the same file name.
4302 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4303 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4304 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4305 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4306 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4307 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4308 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4311 ** New modes and packages
4313 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4314 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4315 it, but some do not.
4317 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4320 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4321 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4324 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4326 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4327 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4328 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4329 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4331 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4332 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4333 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4335 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4336 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4337 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4338 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4339 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4342 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4343 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4345 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4346 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4347 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4348 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4350 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4352 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4353 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4354 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4355 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4356 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4357 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4358 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4359 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4360 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4361 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4362 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4364 Platform-specific modes:
4366 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4367 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4368 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4369 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4370 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4371 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4372 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4373 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4374 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4376 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4378 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4379 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4380 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4381 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4383 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4384 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4385 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4387 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4388 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4389 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4390 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4392 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4393 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4394 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4397 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4398 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4399 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4400 current input method for reading this one event.
4402 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4403 now control whether to output certain characters as
4404 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4405 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4406 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4407 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4409 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4411 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4412 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4414 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4415 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4416 always increases point by 1.
4418 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4419 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4421 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4423 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4424 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4425 default value changed. For example,
4427 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4432 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4435 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4436 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4437 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4438 `:version' in the top level group.
4440 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4442 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4443 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4445 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4446 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4447 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4450 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4451 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4454 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4455 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4456 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4458 ** Frame-local variables.
4460 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4461 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4462 local bindings for that variable.
4464 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4465 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4466 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4469 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4470 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4471 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4472 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4474 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4475 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4476 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4477 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4479 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4480 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4481 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4482 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4483 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4485 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4486 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4487 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4488 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4490 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4491 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4493 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4494 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4495 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4497 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4498 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4499 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4500 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4502 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4503 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4506 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4507 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4508 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4509 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4510 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4512 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4513 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4514 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4515 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4517 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4518 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4519 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4520 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4521 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4523 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4524 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4525 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4526 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4528 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4529 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4530 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4532 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4533 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4534 was directed to display this buffer.
4536 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4537 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4538 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4539 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4540 set-window-configuration.
4542 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4543 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4544 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4545 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4547 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4548 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4549 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4551 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4552 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4553 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4555 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4556 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4558 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4559 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4561 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4562 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4563 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4565 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
4566 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
4567 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
4568 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
4572 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
4573 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
4576 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
4577 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
4578 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
4579 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
4580 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
4582 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
4584 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
4585 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
4586 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
4587 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
4590 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
4591 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
4592 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
4593 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
4594 The supported properties include
4596 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4598 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4599 item should appear in the menu.
4601 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
4602 which will be REAL-BINDING.
4603 It should return a binding to use instead.
4605 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
4606 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
4607 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
4608 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
4609 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
4612 This means that the command normally has no
4613 keyboard equivalent.
4614 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
4615 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
4616 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
4617 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
4618 value says whether this button is currently selected.
4620 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
4621 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
4623 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
4627 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
4628 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
4629 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
4630 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
4632 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
4634 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4635 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
4636 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
4637 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
4638 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
4639 forward, away from the user.
4641 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4643 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
4644 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
4645 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
4646 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
4647 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
4649 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
4651 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
4652 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
4653 that were dragged and dropped.
4655 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
4657 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
4659 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
4660 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
4661 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
4663 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
4664 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
4665 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
4667 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
4668 in Emacs 19 and before.
4670 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
4671 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
4673 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
4674 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
4675 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
4676 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
4678 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
4679 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
4680 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
4681 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
4682 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
4684 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
4685 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
4686 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
4687 consistent with the new representation.
4689 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
4690 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
4691 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
4692 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4694 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
4695 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
4696 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
4698 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
4699 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
4700 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
4702 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
4703 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
4704 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
4706 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4707 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
4709 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
4710 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
4712 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
4713 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
4714 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
4715 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
4717 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
4718 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
4720 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
4721 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
4722 buffer or string being searched.
4724 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
4725 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
4726 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
4727 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
4728 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
4729 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
4730 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
4732 *** Structure of coding system changed.
4734 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
4735 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
4736 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
4737 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
4738 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
4739 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
4740 define-coding-system-alias.
4742 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
4743 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
4744 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
4745 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
4746 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
4747 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
4748 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
4751 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
4752 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
4753 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
4754 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
4756 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
4757 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
4758 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
4759 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
4761 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
4762 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
4763 This function requires a user interaction.
4765 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
4766 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
4767 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
4768 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
4769 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
4770 select-safe-coding-system.
4772 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
4773 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
4774 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
4777 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
4778 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
4779 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
4781 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
4782 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
4783 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
4784 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
4786 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
4787 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
4788 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
4791 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
4792 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
4794 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
4795 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
4796 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
4797 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
4798 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
4799 range of characters.
4801 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
4802 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
4804 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
4805 in the current buffer at position POS.
4807 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
4808 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
4809 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
4810 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
4811 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
4812 binding input-method-function to nil.
4814 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
4815 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
4816 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
4817 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
4818 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
4820 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
4821 subsequent events of a key sequence.
4823 *** You can customize any language environment by using
4824 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
4826 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
4827 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
4828 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
4829 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
4830 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
4832 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
4834 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
4835 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
4836 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
4839 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
4840 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
4842 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
4843 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
4844 in your .emacs file.)
4846 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
4847 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
4849 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
4850 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
4852 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
4853 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
4856 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
4857 delete the character before point, as usual.
4859 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
4860 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
4861 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
4863 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
4864 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
4865 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
4866 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
4867 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
4870 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
4871 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
4872 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
4873 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
4874 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
4876 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
4877 and is an alias for it.
4879 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
4880 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
4882 ** Scrolling changes
4884 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
4885 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
4887 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
4888 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
4891 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
4892 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
4893 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
4894 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
4896 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
4897 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
4898 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
4899 recenters the window.
4901 ** International character set support (MULE)
4903 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
4904 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
4905 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
4906 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
4907 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
4908 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
4910 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
4911 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
4912 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
4913 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
4914 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
4916 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
4917 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
4918 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
4919 language, to make it possible to type them.
4921 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
4922 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
4924 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
4925 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
4927 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
4929 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
4931 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
4932 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
4933 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
4934 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
4935 characters for their work until they want to change.
4939 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
4940 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
4941 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
4942 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
4943 support several input methods.
4945 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
4946 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
4949 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
4950 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
4951 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
4952 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
4953 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
4956 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
4957 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
4958 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
4959 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
4960 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
4962 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
4963 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
4964 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
4965 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
4967 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
4968 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
4969 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
4970 the first guess is wrong.
4972 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
4973 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
4975 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
4976 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
4977 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
4978 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
4980 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
4981 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
4982 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
4983 translate automatically to and from either one.
4985 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
4987 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
4988 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
4989 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
4992 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
4993 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
4994 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
4995 multibyte characters in that buffer.
4997 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
4998 character conversion as well.
5000 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5002 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5003 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5004 requires using many fonts.
5006 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5007 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5009 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5010 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5011 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5012 you would use a font.
5014 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5015 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5016 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5018 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5019 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5020 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5021 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5022 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5024 *** Defining fontsets.
5026 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5027 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5028 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5030 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5031 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5032 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5033 standard fontset are created automatically.
5035 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5036 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5037 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5038 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5039 name is `fontset-startup'.
5041 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5042 The resource value should have this form:
5043 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5044 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5045 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5046 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5047 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5048 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5049 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5050 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5051 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5053 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5054 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5055 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5057 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5058 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5060 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5061 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5062 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5063 Here is the substitution rule:
5064 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5065 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5066 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5067 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5068 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5070 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5071 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5072 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5074 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5075 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5076 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5077 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5080 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5081 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5083 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5084 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5085 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5086 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5087 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5088 system for new files that you create.
5090 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5091 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5092 whole Emacs session.
5094 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5095 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5096 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5098 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5099 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5100 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5101 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5102 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5104 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5105 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5106 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5107 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5108 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5110 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5111 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5113 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5114 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5116 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5117 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5119 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5120 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5121 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5122 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5125 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5126 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5127 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5128 translated into that character code.
5130 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5131 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5133 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5135 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5136 the coding system for keyboard input.
5138 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5139 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5140 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5142 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5144 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5145 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5146 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5147 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5148 designed to work with terminals.
5150 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5151 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5152 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5153 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5154 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5155 in the corresponding buffer.
5157 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5159 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5160 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5161 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5163 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5164 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5165 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5168 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5169 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5171 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5172 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5173 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5174 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5176 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5177 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5178 related information.
5180 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5181 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5184 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5185 information about the support for a particular language.
5186 You specify the language as an argument.
5188 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5189 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5192 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5193 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5194 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5195 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5197 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5199 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5200 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5201 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5202 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5203 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5204 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5205 K euc-korea (Korean)
5208 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5211 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5212 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5213 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5217 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5218 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5219 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5220 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5222 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5223 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5225 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5226 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5227 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5228 Rmail files themselves.
5230 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5231 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5233 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5236 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5237 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5238 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5239 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5240 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5242 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5243 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5244 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5247 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5248 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5249 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5250 without any conversion.
5252 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5253 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5254 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5255 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5257 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5258 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5260 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5261 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5263 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5264 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5266 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5267 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5268 in the buffer before point.
5270 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5271 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5274 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5275 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5277 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5279 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5280 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5282 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5283 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5284 can become a bottleneck.
5286 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5287 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5288 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5289 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5290 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5291 so useful that the change is worth while.
5293 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5294 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5295 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5296 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5298 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5299 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5302 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5303 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5304 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5306 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5307 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5308 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5310 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5311 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5312 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5314 ** Changes in View mode.
5316 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5317 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5319 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5320 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5322 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5325 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5326 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5328 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5329 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5330 not just the selected window.
5332 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5333 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5334 turns View mode on or off.
5336 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5337 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5338 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5340 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5341 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5343 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5344 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5345 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5346 which version to compare with.
5348 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5349 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5351 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5352 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5353 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5354 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5356 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5357 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5358 blocks, all of them or none.
5360 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5361 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5364 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5365 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5366 However, the mode will not be changed if
5367 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5368 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5369 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5370 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5372 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5374 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5375 these commands do not change the major mode.
5377 ** M-x occur changes.
5379 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5380 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5382 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5383 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5384 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5386 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5387 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5388 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5389 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5390 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5392 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5393 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5394 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5395 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5397 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5398 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5399 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5401 ** Outline mode changes.
5403 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5405 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5407 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5408 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5409 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5412 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5413 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5416 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5417 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5419 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5421 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5422 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5423 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5424 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5426 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5427 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5428 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5430 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5431 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5434 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5435 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5436 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5437 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5439 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5440 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5441 can be. The default value is 30.
5443 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5445 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5446 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5447 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5448 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5449 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5452 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5453 compose-mail-other-frame.
5455 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5456 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5457 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5458 buffer that shows the original message.
5460 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5461 with separator lines around the contents.
5463 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5464 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5465 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5466 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5468 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5470 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5471 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5472 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5473 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5475 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5476 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5479 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5480 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5483 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5484 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5485 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5486 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5488 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5489 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5490 be taken to be magic.
5492 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5493 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5494 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5496 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5497 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5499 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5500 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5502 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5504 new key dired.el binding old key
5505 ------- ---------------- -------
5506 * c dired-change-marks c
5508 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5509 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5510 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5512 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5513 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5514 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5515 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5516 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5517 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5521 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5522 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5523 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5524 each time you run it.
5526 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5527 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5529 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5530 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5531 means to move in the opposite direction.
5533 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5534 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5536 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5537 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5538 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5539 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5544 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5546 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5549 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
5550 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5552 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5555 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5557 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5559 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5561 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5562 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5563 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5565 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
5567 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
5569 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
5570 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
5572 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
5573 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
5574 used to pick articles.
5576 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
5577 another have been added.
5579 `M-x gnus-change-server'
5581 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
5582 generating lines in buffers.
5584 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
5587 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
5589 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
5591 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
5593 *** Scores can be decayed.
5595 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
5597 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
5598 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
5600 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
5603 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
5605 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
5606 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
5608 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
5610 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
5611 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
5613 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
5614 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
5616 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
5619 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
5620 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
5622 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
5624 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
5626 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
5628 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
5630 Use the `Y c' command.
5632 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
5634 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
5636 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
5638 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
5639 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
5641 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
5643 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
5645 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
5646 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
5648 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
5650 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
5651 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
5652 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
5653 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
5656 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
5657 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
5658 particular news group. This can be done by:
5660 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
5662 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
5663 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
5664 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
5665 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
5666 for reading and posting).
5668 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
5669 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
5670 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
5671 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
5674 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
5675 default. Here are some of these default settings:
5677 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
5678 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
5679 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
5680 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
5681 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
5683 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
5684 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
5688 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
5689 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
5690 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
5691 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
5692 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
5695 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
5696 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
5697 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
5698 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
5699 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
5700 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
5702 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
5703 of the current buffer.
5705 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
5706 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
5707 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
5709 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
5710 style that the Python developers like.
5712 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
5713 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
5714 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
5718 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
5719 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
5720 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
5722 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
5723 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
5726 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
5727 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
5729 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
5730 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
5731 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
5732 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
5734 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
5735 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
5737 ** Calendar changes.
5739 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
5740 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
5741 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
5745 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
5747 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
5749 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
5750 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
5751 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
5752 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
5753 It defaults to `letter'.
5754 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
5756 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
5757 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
5758 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
5760 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
5761 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
5764 *** Horizontal layout
5766 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
5767 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
5768 All are measured in points.
5772 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
5773 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
5774 All are measured in points.
5778 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
5779 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
5780 margin above the text.
5782 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
5783 framing box is printed around the header.
5785 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
5786 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
5788 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
5789 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
5790 `ps-header-font-size'.
5794 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
5795 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
5796 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
5797 elements to this alist.
5799 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
5800 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
5802 ** hideshow changes.
5804 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
5807 *** Support for java-mode added.
5809 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
5810 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
5812 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
5813 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
5814 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
5816 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
5817 robust and a lot faster.
5819 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
5821 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
5822 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
5823 documentation for more details.
5825 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
5827 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
5828 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
5829 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
5830 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
5831 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
5833 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
5834 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
5835 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
5836 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
5842 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
5843 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
5844 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
5845 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
5846 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
5847 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
5849 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
5851 *** Maximum decoration
5853 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
5854 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
5855 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
5856 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
5857 to get the old behavior.
5861 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
5863 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
5864 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
5866 *** Configurable support
5868 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
5869 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
5870 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
5871 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
5872 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
5873 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
5874 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
5876 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
5877 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
5878 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
5880 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
5882 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
5883 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
5886 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
5888 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
5894 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
5895 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
5896 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
5897 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
5899 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
5901 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
5902 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
5903 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
5905 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
5907 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
5908 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
5909 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
5910 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
5911 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
5912 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
5913 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
5915 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
5916 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
5917 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
5918 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
5919 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
5920 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
5922 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
5924 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
5925 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
5926 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
5927 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
5929 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
5932 ** Ada mode changes.
5934 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
5935 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
5936 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
5937 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
5940 *** There are two new commands:
5941 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
5942 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
5944 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
5945 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
5946 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
5948 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
5949 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
5950 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
5952 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
5953 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
5954 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
5955 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
5957 ** Scheme mode changes.
5959 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
5960 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
5961 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
5962 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
5965 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
5966 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
5967 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
5968 variables as buffer-local variables.
5970 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
5973 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
5975 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
5976 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
5977 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
5978 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
5980 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
5981 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
5984 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
5985 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
5986 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
5987 option takes precedence.
5989 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
5990 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
5991 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
5993 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
5994 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
5997 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
5998 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6000 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6001 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6004 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6005 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6006 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6007 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6008 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6009 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6011 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6012 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6013 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6014 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6016 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6017 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6018 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6019 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6020 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6022 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6023 since it applies only to the current frame.
6025 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6026 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6027 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6029 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6030 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6031 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6032 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6033 instead of just the file you are editing.
6037 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6038 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6039 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6040 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6041 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6044 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6045 knows which kind of label is needed.
6047 C-c ) reftex-reference
6048 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6049 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6051 C-c [ reftex-citation
6052 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6053 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6055 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6056 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6059 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6060 can quickly jump to every section.
6062 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6063 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6064 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6065 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6066 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6068 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6070 *** Info documentation is now available.
6072 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6073 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6075 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6076 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6078 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6079 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6081 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6082 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6083 appropriate functions.
6085 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6086 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6088 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6091 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6092 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6094 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6097 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6098 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6099 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6101 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6102 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6103 prefixed with `ALT'.
6105 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6106 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6107 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6110 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6111 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6112 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6114 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6115 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6117 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6118 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6119 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6121 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6123 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6125 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6128 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6129 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6132 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6135 *** Added support for imenu.
6137 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6138 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6139 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6140 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6142 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6143 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6145 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6147 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6149 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6150 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6151 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6154 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6155 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6157 ** browse-url changes
6159 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6160 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6161 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6162 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6163 customization variables.
6165 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6167 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6168 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6169 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6173 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6174 pops up the Info file for this command.
6176 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6177 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6178 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6181 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6182 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6183 files in the same directory.
6185 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6186 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6187 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6191 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6192 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6194 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6195 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6196 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6197 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6198 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6199 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6200 color when Viper is in insert state.
6201 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6202 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6203 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6207 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6208 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6209 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6210 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6211 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6213 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6215 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6216 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6218 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6219 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6220 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6222 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6223 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6224 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6225 methods and protocols.
6227 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6228 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6229 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6232 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6233 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6234 at least M times and as many as N times.
6236 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6237 in files has changed slightly.
6239 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6240 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6241 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6242 with old time-stamp-format values.
6244 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6245 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6246 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6249 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6250 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6251 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6252 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6253 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6254 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6256 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6257 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6258 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6260 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6261 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6262 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6263 recommended now will continue to work then.
6265 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6268 ** There are some additional major modes:
6270 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6271 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6272 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6274 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6275 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6278 ** New Lisp packages include:
6280 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6282 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6283 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6285 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6287 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6290 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6291 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6294 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6295 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6296 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6297 strings or comments.
6299 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6300 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6301 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6302 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6305 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6306 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6308 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6309 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6311 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6313 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6314 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6316 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6318 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6320 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6322 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6323 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6325 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6326 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6327 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6328 original place after inserting the copy.
6330 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6333 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6334 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6335 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6337 Enable mouse-drag with:
6338 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6340 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6342 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6343 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6345 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6346 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6350 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6351 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6352 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6353 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6354 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6355 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6356 instance) and vice versa.
6358 To use this package load it using
6359 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6360 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6361 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6362 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6363 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6364 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6366 *** Interface to ph.
6368 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6370 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6371 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6374 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6376 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6377 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6378 while the real cursor does not move.
6380 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6381 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6383 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6384 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6388 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6389 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6390 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6391 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6393 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6395 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6397 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6399 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6400 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6401 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6402 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6403 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6405 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6406 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6407 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6408 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6409 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6410 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6412 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6414 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6415 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6416 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6417 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6419 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6420 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6422 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6423 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6426 ** Basic Lisp changes
6428 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6429 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6431 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6432 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6435 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6437 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6439 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6440 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6442 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6443 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6446 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6448 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6450 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6452 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6453 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6454 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6457 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6458 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6459 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6461 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6462 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6463 adding one of these suffixes.
6465 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6466 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6467 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6469 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6470 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6472 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6474 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6475 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6477 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6478 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6480 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6482 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6483 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6485 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6486 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6487 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6488 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6490 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6491 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6494 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6495 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6496 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6499 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6500 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6503 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6505 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6506 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6507 Then it returns that string.
6509 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6511 (with-output-to-string
6512 (princ "The buffer is ")
6513 (princ (buffer-name)))
6515 returns "The buffer is foo".
6517 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6520 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6521 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6522 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6524 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6525 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6527 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6528 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6529 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6530 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6531 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6532 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6534 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6535 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6536 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6539 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6540 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6541 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6542 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6543 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6545 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6546 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6547 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6548 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6550 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6551 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6553 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
6555 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6556 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6557 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6558 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6561 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6562 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6565 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
6567 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
6568 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
6569 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
6570 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
6571 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
6573 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
6575 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
6576 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
6577 more than the number of characters.
6579 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
6580 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
6581 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
6582 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
6583 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
6584 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
6586 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
6587 and returns a string containing those characters.
6589 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
6590 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
6591 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
6592 character, sref signals an error.
6594 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
6595 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
6596 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6598 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
6599 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
6600 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6602 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
6603 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
6604 to a vector of the characters in it.
6606 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
6607 of a string. You call it as follows:
6609 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
6611 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
6612 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
6613 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
6614 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
6615 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
6617 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
6618 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6620 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
6621 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6623 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
6624 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
6625 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
6626 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
6628 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
6630 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
6632 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
6633 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
6634 are not included in the resulting value.
6636 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
6637 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
6638 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
6639 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
6641 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
6642 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
6643 character extends across that column), then the padding character
6644 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
6645 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
6646 column START-COLUMN.
6648 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
6649 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
6650 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
6651 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
6652 changed text, before the change.
6654 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
6655 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
6656 one character set for each script, not for each language.
6658 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
6660 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
6662 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
6663 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
6665 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
6666 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
6667 which identify the character within that character set.
6669 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
6670 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
6671 opposite of split-char.
6673 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
6674 of all the characters between BEG and END.
6676 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
6677 of all the characters in a string.
6679 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
6680 and specifying coding systems.
6682 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
6683 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
6684 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
6685 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
6686 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
6687 as what to do about code conversion.)
6689 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
6690 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
6692 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6693 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6694 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
6696 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6697 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
6698 to match against a file name.
6700 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6701 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6702 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6703 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6704 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6705 specifies the coding system for encoding.
6707 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6708 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6710 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
6711 the coding system to use for network sockets.
6713 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
6714 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
6715 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
6718 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
6719 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
6720 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
6721 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
6722 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
6723 specifies the coding system for encoding.
6725 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
6726 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
6728 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
6729 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
6730 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
6731 start the subprocess.
6733 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
6734 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
6735 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
6736 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
6737 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
6739 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
6740 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
6743 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
6744 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
6745 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
6746 connection permanently or until overridden.
6748 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
6749 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
6750 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
6751 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
6752 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
6753 system for one operation at a time.
6755 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
6756 files, subprocesses or network connections.
6758 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
6759 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
6760 The value is a cons cell,
6761 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
6762 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
6763 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
6764 input to the subprocess.
6766 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
6767 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
6769 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
6770 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
6771 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
6773 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
6774 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
6775 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
6776 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
6779 Thus, instead of writing
6781 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
6782 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
6784 you would now write this:
6786 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
6787 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
6791 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
6792 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
6793 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
6794 for a description of them.
6796 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
6797 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
6799 (defgroup ispell nil
6800 "Spell checking using Ispell."
6803 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
6804 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
6805 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
6806 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
6807 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
6809 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
6810 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
6811 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
6812 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
6813 first-level subgroups.
6815 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
6817 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
6818 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
6822 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
6823 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
6824 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
6825 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
6826 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
6827 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
6829 ** Text property changes
6831 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
6834 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
6835 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
6836 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
6837 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
6838 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
6840 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
6841 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
6842 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
6843 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
6845 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
6846 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
6847 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
6849 ** Changes in invisibility features
6851 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
6852 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
6853 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
6854 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
6855 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
6856 make the overlay visible.
6858 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
6859 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
6860 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
6861 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
6862 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
6863 t when it should hide it.
6865 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
6867 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
6868 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
6869 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
6870 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
6871 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
6872 Here is an example of how to do this:
6874 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
6875 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
6876 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
6877 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
6880 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
6883 ;; When done with the overlays:
6884 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
6886 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
6888 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
6890 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
6891 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
6892 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
6893 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
6895 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
6896 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
6897 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
6899 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
6900 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
6902 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
6903 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
6905 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
6906 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
6907 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
6909 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
6910 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
6911 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
6912 determine the syntax type of the character.
6914 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
6915 of the current buffer.
6917 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
6918 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
6919 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
6921 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
6922 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
6923 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
6924 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
6925 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
6927 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
6930 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
6931 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
6932 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
6934 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
6935 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
6936 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
6937 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
6938 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
6940 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
6941 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
6942 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
6944 ** Changes in face features
6946 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
6947 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
6949 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
6950 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
6952 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
6953 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
6955 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
6956 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
6958 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
6959 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
6960 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
6961 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
6964 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
6965 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
6967 ** Changes in file-handling functions
6969 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
6970 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
6971 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
6972 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
6974 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
6977 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
6978 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
6980 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
6981 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
6983 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
6984 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
6986 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
6987 character code conversion as well as other things.
6989 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
6990 (formerly it did not).
6992 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
6993 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
6995 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
6996 instead of constant strings.
6998 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
6999 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7000 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7002 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7003 in the same way as before.
7005 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7006 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7007 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7009 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7010 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7011 else, and returns nil.
7013 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7014 directory cannot be listed.
7016 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7018 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7019 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7020 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7021 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7024 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7025 It is available through the history command M-n.
7027 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7028 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7029 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7030 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7031 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7033 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7034 argument in this way.
7036 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7037 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7038 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7040 ** Echo area features
7042 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7043 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7044 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7045 after the echo area is cleared.
7047 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7048 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7050 ** Keyboard input features
7052 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7053 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7055 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7056 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7059 ** Frame-related changes
7061 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7062 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7063 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7065 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7066 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7067 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7069 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7070 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7071 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7072 in the selected frame.
7074 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7075 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7076 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7078 ** X Windows features
7080 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7081 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7082 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7084 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7085 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7087 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7088 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7089 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7091 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7092 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7094 ** Subprocess features
7096 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7097 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7100 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7101 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7103 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7104 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7106 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7107 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7109 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7110 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7111 goes after the other menu items.
7113 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7114 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7115 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7118 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7119 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7121 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7122 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7125 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7126 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7127 but its hook is still run.
7129 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7130 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7132 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7133 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7134 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7136 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7137 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7138 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7141 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7142 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7144 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7145 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7146 functions like display-time.
7148 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7149 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7151 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7152 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7153 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7155 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7156 if there is an error in compilation.
7158 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7159 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7160 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7161 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7163 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7164 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7165 the *scratch* buffer.
7167 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7168 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7169 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7170 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7172 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7173 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7174 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7176 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7177 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7178 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7179 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7181 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7182 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7183 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7185 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7186 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7187 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7188 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7189 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7192 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7193 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7194 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7195 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7197 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7198 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7199 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7200 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7202 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7204 ** imenu.el changes.
7206 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7207 item from menu created by imenu.
7209 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7210 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7211 select one of those items.
7213 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7215 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7217 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7218 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7220 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7221 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7222 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7224 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7226 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7227 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7229 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7230 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7231 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7232 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7233 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7236 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7237 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7239 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7240 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7241 as in previous Emacs versions.
7243 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7244 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7245 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7248 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7249 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7250 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7251 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7254 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7255 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7256 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7257 line and then executing the macro.
7259 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7261 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7262 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7263 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7268 *** Font Lock support modes
7270 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7271 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7272 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7273 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7274 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7276 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7278 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7284 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7285 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7286 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7287 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7288 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7289 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7290 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7292 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7294 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7296 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7298 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7300 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7303 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7308 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7309 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7310 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7311 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7313 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7314 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7316 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7317 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7320 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7321 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7323 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7325 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7327 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7329 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7332 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7334 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7336 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7338 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7340 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7343 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7345 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7347 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7349 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7351 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7353 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7355 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7357 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7360 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7362 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7365 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7367 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7368 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7370 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7372 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7374 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7376 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7378 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7381 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7383 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7384 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7386 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7387 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7388 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7390 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7391 articles with the `*' command.
7393 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7395 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7397 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7399 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7401 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7402 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7404 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7407 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7409 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7411 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7413 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7415 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7417 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7419 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7421 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7423 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7425 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7426 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7428 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7431 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7433 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7434 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7436 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7438 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7440 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7442 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7445 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7447 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7449 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7450 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7452 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7454 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7456 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7458 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7460 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7462 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7465 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7467 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7468 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7469 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7472 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7475 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7478 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7479 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7482 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7483 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7484 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7485 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7486 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7489 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7491 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7493 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7494 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7495 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7496 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7497 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7499 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7500 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7501 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7503 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7505 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7506 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7507 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7508 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7509 chapter of the manual for details.
7511 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7512 customization variables take effect.
7514 ** Marking with the mouse.
7516 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7517 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7518 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7520 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7522 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7524 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7525 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7527 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7528 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7529 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7530 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7531 applications, these problems are significant.
7533 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7534 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7535 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7536 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7537 other DOS application as a subprocess.
7539 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7540 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7542 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7543 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7544 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7545 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7546 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7547 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7549 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7551 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7552 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7553 minibuffer contains.
7555 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7557 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7558 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7559 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7560 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7562 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7563 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7564 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
7565 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
7567 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
7568 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
7570 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
7571 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
7572 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
7574 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
7575 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
7576 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
7577 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
7579 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
7581 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
7582 to replace the characters it "deletes".
7584 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
7586 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
7587 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
7588 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
7589 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
7590 immediately after the selected one.
7592 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
7593 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
7595 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
7597 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
7598 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
7599 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
7600 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
7603 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
7604 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
7607 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
7608 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
7609 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
7610 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
7611 now that the bug is fixed.
7613 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
7615 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
7616 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
7617 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
7618 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
7620 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
7621 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
7622 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
7623 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
7625 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
7626 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
7627 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
7629 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
7630 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
7631 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
7632 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
7635 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
7636 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
7638 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
7639 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
7640 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
7641 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
7643 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
7644 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
7645 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
7646 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
7647 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
7648 `mail-directory-stream'.)
7650 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
7651 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
7652 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
7653 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
7655 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
7656 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
7657 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
7659 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
7660 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
7661 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
7662 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
7663 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
7664 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
7665 to a limitation in font-lock).
7667 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
7669 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
7670 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
7671 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
7674 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
7675 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
7677 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7679 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
7681 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
7683 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
7685 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
7686 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
7687 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
7688 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
7689 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
7690 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
7692 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
7695 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
7696 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
7698 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
7703 *** Global Font Lock mode
7705 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
7706 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
7707 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
7708 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
7709 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
7711 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
7713 (global-font-lock-mode t)
7717 *** Local Refontification
7719 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
7720 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
7721 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
7722 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
7724 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
7725 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
7726 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
7727 above and below point.
7729 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
7733 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
7734 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
7735 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
7736 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
7737 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
7740 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
7742 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
7743 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
7745 ** hide-show changes.
7747 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
7748 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
7751 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
7752 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
7754 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
7755 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
7756 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
7760 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
7761 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
7763 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
7764 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
7766 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
7768 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
7769 pressing both mouse buttons.
7771 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
7772 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
7775 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
7778 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
7780 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
7781 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
7783 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
7785 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
7787 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
7789 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
7791 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
7793 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
7795 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
7796 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
7797 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
7798 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
7799 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
7801 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
7803 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
7804 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
7805 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
7808 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
7811 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
7813 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
7814 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
7816 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
7817 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
7819 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
7820 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
7821 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
7823 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
7824 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
7827 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7829 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
7830 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
7831 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
7833 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
7834 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
7835 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
7837 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
7838 up if too much time passes.
7840 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
7842 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
7843 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
7844 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
7847 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
7848 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
7849 call looks like this:
7851 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
7853 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
7854 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
7855 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
7858 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
7859 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
7862 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
7863 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
7864 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
7865 each time Emacs becomes idle.
7867 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
7868 idle for SECS seconds.
7870 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
7871 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
7872 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
7875 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
7876 there is no answer within a certain time.
7878 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
7880 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
7881 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
7882 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
7884 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
7885 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
7886 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
7887 arguments in between are ignored.
7889 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
7890 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
7892 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
7893 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
7894 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
7895 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
7898 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
7899 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
7900 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
7901 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
7902 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
7903 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
7905 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
7906 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
7907 systems with limited file name syntax.
7909 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
7910 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
7911 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
7914 (defvar save-completions-file-name
7915 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
7916 "*The filename to save completions to.")
7918 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
7919 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
7920 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
7921 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
7922 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
7924 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
7925 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
7926 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
7928 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
7929 marker from its buffer position.
7931 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
7932 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
7933 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
7935 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
7936 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
7937 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
7938 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
7939 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
7940 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
7942 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
7943 errors that happen often during editing.
7945 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
7946 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
7947 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
7949 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
7950 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
7952 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
7953 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
7954 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
7955 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
7956 and not get-buffer-window.
7958 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
7959 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
7960 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
7962 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
7963 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
7964 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
7965 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
7966 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
7967 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
7968 over and over for the same text.
7970 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
7972 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
7973 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
7975 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
7978 in addition to the normal
7982 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
7983 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
7984 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
7986 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7988 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
7989 Copyright information:
7991 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7993 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7994 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7995 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7996 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7998 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7999 of this document, or of portions of it,
8000 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8001 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8005 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"